[heygrow]

Does anyone know if you can harvest the seeds from Tomatoes grown from seeds bought from commercial seed suppliers. Also can you do this with other veg like peas or cucumber. I'm wondering if you have to buy new seeds every year or just get seeds from what you have already grown.

[savbo]

yes
 

[Trillium]

Everything will make seeds, but there's no guarantee that you'll get seeds for exactly that same plant. Many plants will cross pollinate and be slightly different than the parent. If you want true seeds then you'd need to either isolate them or  pollinate them yourself with a brush, put a paper bag over them and tie it off so the bees can't get in. Once the fruit starts forming you can remove the bag and tie special string at the fruit so you'll know later which one you pollinated for seeds.

Hybrids (F1, F2, etc) will never come true as seed since 2 different parents were used to make a 3rd variety. Often the parents are less than desirable, but the result is. And naturally, the 2 parents are top secret info.

If you're growing, say, one type of beet and no one else around you is growing any, then you wouldn't need to bother with pollinating or bagging. But if you've got something that's wind pollinated like corn and you're near fields of GMO (genetically modified organism) seed corn, then the wind will pollinate for you and you'll likely get a sterile seed that you can eat but not use as seed.

[solway cropper]

I have saved seed of various things because it's useful to know how to do it but quite honestly it's much easier to buy it. Seeds are so cheap unless you're buying things like F1 cucumbers and you wouldn't save seed from these anyway for the reason posted by Trillium.

I was going to try saving pea seed one year but the family kept nicking the pea pods and eating the contents. 

[A Reyt Tayty]

I saved seed from my toms last year. The ones I have in the house set off like good 'uns. They now have their first true leaves on, but seem to have come to a standstill. Nothing seems to be doing as it should for me this year. No shows with carrots and parsnips, slow toms and kamikaze cukes. 

[DD.]

I was going to try saving pea seed one year but the family kept nicking the pea pods and eating the contents. 

I will be sowing the equivalent of about a 250 row of peas this year. The seed didn't cost me a penny.

You don't have the cross pollination issues or the hybrid problem with them though.

[Lawrence]

There is a good article on this on the realseeds website.
They only sell non hybrid varieties and actually encourage their customers to save their own seed.

[mrs mud]

Great topic

I have run out of peas already and still want to do two more rows so I'll be buying more peas this week, but good to know I can keep some of mine for next year.

The first time I opened a packet of peas, a few years back, I confess    I was suprised to see peas, not sure what I expected to see, maybe a little tiny seed or something.   I went to show the OH the opened packet and he gave me a long stare but said nothing 

[LilacSandy]

I keep my 'Roma' and 'Golden Sunrise' tomato seeds every year and grow them with several different varieties, still get great pasta sauce from Roma and lovely sweet toms from GS.

Had a lovely sweet little orange pepper called 'Sweet Baby' from the supermarket and planted the fresh seeds in February, the plants are going great guns, the parent may have been an F1 and I may end up with a very disappointing pepper or I may have a great little plant that I can keep propagating every year.  For me that is one of the most fun things when growing your own. 

[bertiewhite]

I'm a * for saving my seed and if I see anything going in the compost with seeds still in, I'll bung them in a pot "just to see what happens". I do buy seeds as well but that's the beauty of gardening for me - it can be as cheap or expensive as you want to make it and if the collected seeds don't do anything, I've lost nothing but time. I also nick seeds from my parrot to see what they do 

[PembsPanther]

I remember a few years ago we grew some gigantic sunflowers, in the autumn when they were dead I took one of the heads and let it dry out and harvested hundreds of seeds from it, I was really pleased thinking I had ended up with all these seeds essentially for free. Anyway the next year we sowed about 50 of them and not a dingle one germinated, so we sowed another 50 again not a single one germinated, we gave up after about 200

I would love to figure out properly how to harvest seeds but it does seems a little more complicated than I thought.

[LilacSandy]

How did you store the seeds PembsPanther?  You need to keep them dry and in a cool place.

[PembsPanther]

How did you store the seeds PembsPanther?  You need to keep them dry and in a cool place.

It was more the wife's idea than mine, from what I remember she placed them on kitchen roll on the window sill for a few days to dry out, they they were all put in a polythene bag and shoved in a draw with the rest of the seeds, that was about it.

[LilacSandy]

I never use plastic bags, only paper ones.  If the seed is not 100% dry then they will rot in a polly bag or try to germinate in the damp.