If the tomato plant variety is a hybrid is it not recommended to use its seeds from cross-pollination that can produce an unwanted variety for next season?
If anyone else likes the Campari tomatoes from the grocery store, I save those seeds and plant new plants every year. they stay true to type and bear heavy. My dad always squished his tomato seeds out onto a paper towel and let them dry. Then in the spring he would plant the paper towel with the seeds stuck on it flat in a starter bed. I just write the variety name on the paper towel and tear off a seed or 2 and put them in starter pots.
The way I look at it, if I save seed from something, and it doesn't work out, I haven't lost anything, and if it does work out, I've gained.
/johnny
You can save seeds from hybrids too. Just understand that they *likely* will not come true.
That’s not always the case. The ‘Campari’ tomatoes you see for sale in the little plastic clamshells at the grocery store will come true something like 97 or 99 times out of 100.
Other stuff, like the Sungold variety of cherry tomatoes are notorious for not coming true. YMMV. They will all be tomatoes though. And they will all ‘eat’. Just not necessarily what you expected. If TSHTF grocery store tomatoes could be used for seeds if you didn’t have any other seeds on hand or your neighbors wanted to grow tomatoes too.
Hybrid seeds can be used, if you have no other source of seeds. Some of them will be like the parent plants instead of the hybrid.
I just save my heirloom seeds - not the hybrids.
An unwanted tomato?!? Never heard of such. I figure if it grows, great. Just don’t tell Monsanto. Who’s to say you won’t like what it produces? If it doesn’t germinate then you’ve lost nothing.