In the polytunnel, the tomatoes have been ripe for a few weeks now and I expect they will be going for another month or more. However, mid-harvest is a good time to get on with seed collection to get ready for next year.

My method for tomatoes is quite simple and seems to work well. I select two or three good tomatoes from a particular variety and scrape the seeds into a glass jar, half-filling it with water. That sits for two to three days and then I strain the liquid and place a neat grid of seeds on a piece of labelled kitchen towel on a plate. After another day or two, when that is quite dry, it can be folded up, sealed with some masking tape and put in my seed box for late winter or early spring.

So far, I’ve got 144 seeds of ‘Golden Sunrise’ drying and I’ve just started soaking some seeds from ‘Legend Bush’. That is far more seeds than I need, as germination rates are generally quite good, but, since all it costs is a bit of time, it is worth keeping a wide safety margin (and it also potentially leaves me with enough to give away or swap too).