Ever wondered about those dark seeds?

ddsack · October 18, 2006

It seems like they turn up occasionally in all tomatoes, but more so toward the end of the growing season when temps are cooler. I had not seen any discussion about their viability. I have wondered if they were duds or had some kind of infection, although the tomatoes they were in were perfectly clean and healthy. I posted a question about them on the GW board last year, but did not get a response, maybe because it was buried in another thread.

Anyway, I was doing a last late mass seed drying a few weeks ago and decided to remove all the dark and partially colored "pinto' seeds from the paper plates and fold them all into a wet paper towel and plastic bag to see if any would germinate. It wasn't very scientific, since I didn't keep track of the varieties, or how many all dark vs pinto seeds I had. I then promptly forgot where I had the plastic bag stashed, and only found it by accident yesterday. Don't know how many weeks they were in the bag. Here are the results:

I'm guessing that I had between 70-100 fresh seeds, and I counted about 20 sprouts. So I suppose that means you have only a 20-30% chance of sprouting the dark seeds. If anyone else wants to do this again, I suggest separating the parti-colored pintos from the all dark seeds into two different groups.

October 18, 2006	#1
ddsack Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Northern Minnesota - zone 3 Posts: 3,224	Ever wondered about those dark seeds? It seems like they turn up occasionally in all tomatoes, but more so toward the end of the growing season when temps are cooler. I had not seen any discussion about their viability. I have wondered if they were duds or had some kind of infection, although the tomatoes they were in were perfectly clean and healthy. I posted a question about them on the GW board last year, but did not get a response, maybe because it was buried in another thread. Anyway, I was doing a last late mass seed drying a few weeks ago and decided to remove all the dark and partially colored "pinto' seeds from the paper plates and fold them all into a wet paper towel and plastic bag to see if any would germinate. It wasn't very scientific, since I didn't keep track of the varieties, or how many all dark vs pinto seeds I had. I then promptly forgot where I had the plastic bag stashed, and only found it by accident yesterday. Don't know how many weeks they were in the bag. Here are the results: I'm guessing that I had between 70-100 fresh seeds, and I counted about 20 sprouts. So I suppose that means you have only a 20-30% chance of sprouting the dark seeds. If anyone else wants to do this again, I suggest separating the parti-colored pintos from the all dark seeds into two different groups.