Newbie question

[Black River]

Hi everyone. I'm interested in saving some of my tomato seeds next year from heirloom varieties. I'm sure this has been asked many times before, but how much separation is required between plants to ensure purity?

[Cole_Robbie]

Accidental crosses are fairly rare, at least with tomatoes. It happens a lot more with peppers. If you want to be sure, I think bagging blossoms with tule or some sort of mesh bag is more reliable than separating plants by distance.

[sirtanon]

While I'm not an expert in this kind of thing, if I remember correctly, the minimum distance to prevent cross-pollination is something like 1/4 of a mile.. but for most home gardeners, this is definitely not an option.

An alternative option is to 'bag' flowers on the plants you want to save seeds from. You can get the small tulle bags from the hobby stores and tie them around a couple of flowers on the plant, and then they can only pollinate themselves - Bees can't reach them.

This thread talks more about bagging flowers.

[AlittleSalt]

Bagging the plants is the best answer for most of us. Of course growing all of the same variety is a pretty sure-fire bet, but not as effective as bagging - because who knows what your neighbors are growing and a cross can happen.

[Black River]

Ok, yes, I think I saw a video once where they used a small bag over the blossoms.....I didn't remember that. Thanks so much for the replies and help!

[bower]

Another way to hedge your bets, if you forget to bag or it doesn't work, is to save seed from first and last fruit. That's because pollinators are less active early and late in the season, most places.

I've been watching what happens with my tomatoes here, where bumblebees are the most dominant pollinator (at least, they are most obvious about it). Early in the season only the queens are out foraging until their first brood hatches. They will not bother with tomatoes because the flowers only contain pollen and no nectar. The queen herself needs nectar to eat, and pollen to feed the brood, so she's looking for flowers that have both. I've seen them check out the tomato plants and fly off without taking anything (with a buzz that sounds like a complaint to me!). But once the first crew of worker bees have hatched, these little ones are working the tomato flowers for all they're worth, and no blossom is left untouched.

This is not the case with peppers, since they produce both nectar and pollen, the queens themselves will meet me at the door falling all over a pepper plant.

[Labradors2]

Wow! That's fascinating info Bower!!! I wondered why my bees (spill chick changed that to bears!) preferred catmint to tomatoes at the beginning of the season, but later they all swooped in on the tomato flowers Now I know

Linda