Gardener's $0 hack for growing an 'endless supply' of tomatoes in your backyard
By Rachael Gavin|
O?ne of the best things about gardening is that once you have one plant you can usually grow more from it without ever needing to buy another.
?This is true for tomatoes because you can use the seeds from the ones you've grown to plant more.
Gardener Sarah Rani from In My Patch showed just how easy it is to save tomato seeds for planting in a TikTok video.
Watch the video above.
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It is so easy in fact, she said it's basically like making a sandwich.
"?The easiest way to collect tomato seeds so you have an endless supply. First things first, you need to pick your best specimen so one that's not on a diseased plant, pick your biggest, juiciest, ripest fruit," she said.
After Rani had picked a tomato she took it inside and sliced it on a chopping board.
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Being so fresh and juicy some of the seeds just spilled out onto the board. Then the gardener placed a paper towel on top to collect them.
?Once the juice was absorbed and the seeds had stuck to the paper towel, she lifted it off the chopping board and labelled it with the variety of tomato the seeds were from.
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From the looks of the paper towel it appears that one slice yielded about 60 seeds, which means the potential for 60 plants if each is viable.
?"Once I've done this for each variety I want to keep I dry the paper towel off in a shady spot จC don't put them in the sun,' she said.
When the paper towel is dry, Rani popped them in an envelope to store them away for later this year
The best time to plant tomatoes in Australia depends on where you live. For those in temperate and cool climates, tomato seed sowing season is spring. Meanwhile, tropical and subtropical areas can grow them year round, but may find autumn and winter the best time to plant.
Given many of us will have to wait to plant our tomato seeds, Rani's hack is a good gardening activity to do now while there are still a few tomatoes left on our plants. This means we can save a few dollars on seeds? when spring rolls around.