Red mustard. Beautiful, tasty and really, really hardy. What's not to love? Just make sure there's no other B. rapa flowering at the same time as they cross like mad. You will need to leave them in much longer than you'd like, or you won't get viable seed. I save seed from lots of things and every year I'm taken aback at how huge the plants can get and how painfully long it takes for the seed to ripen. Growing plants to save seed requires a whole different set of timings, and no, the broad beans won't be out in time to transplant the tomatoes and...

Yes, you are missing a couple of steps that will ensure germination next year. Here's what I learned as a newbie to heirloom seed saving (as far as I know only tomatoes need this treatment). Green tomatoes are not ripe and therefore neither are the seeds. You need a tomato way past prime for viable fertile seeds. If you picked the green tomatoes and let them ripen inside the house, the seeds will still not be viable. Can you leave a tomato or two on the vine to hope that they turn red and mature? Are there any rotten ones on the ground you can collect seeds from? To dry tomato seeds to plant next year you will need to ferment them so that the nearly invisible coating is removed. Put seeds and the clear pulp from around them in a small cup. Add a little water and let them sit at room temp for 3 days. You will see scum on them. Rinse the seeds in a very fine sieve like you'd use for loose tea. Put the seeds back in the rinsed cup and pour in a little fresh water. Wait another 3 days. If you still see scum, repeat rinse steps for another 3 days until no more scum appears. Now lay them out on a sheet of paper towel and let them air dry for a few days. Scrape them off the paper towel and into a zippered sandwich bag, or snack bag. Make sure you label what is in the bag with the name of the heirloom tomato along with the date. To make sure the seeds stay dry, make a packet by stapling a small piece of paper towel filled with some instant powdered milk. Put the stapled packet in the bag with the seeds. Any moisture will be absorbed by the milk powder not the seeds. Store the seed bags at room temp someplace dark. It takes more time to type the instructions than it does to actually do it. Nancy the nancedar - who has more than 100 little seed bags waiting for next year.

Initially is was said that fermentation removed the gel capsules on the seeds, and it does, and also with the help of enzymes from the fungi in the fungal mat that you let form frees the seed from tomato tissue,, and it does, and it was also said that it inactivated any seed borne viruses, and that is wrong since all viruses to date have been found to be in the endosperm of the seed and fermentation can only address pathogens on the seed coat. And it does, in terms of eliminating most of the tomato foliage pathogens as well as some systemic ones. And this we know from the work of Dr. Helene Dillard which I've posted here several times. I will only use fermentation to process seeds, not any of the oxidative methods b'c there's no data to confirm what the oxidative methods can do although many have searched for such data. There are a couple of good places to go to about how to do fermentation correctly. One is at Tania's T-base site and another is at Victory Seeds, Carolyn

rjinga, I don't really keep extensive stat logs, but I do ferment nearly all my tomato seeds as a rule. I did try a few other methods this year, but just out of curiosity. But whether fermented or otherwise scoured, I always finish up with a good rinsing in a bowl of water and save only the sinkers ... and I mean if a seed even comes up off the bottom at the last moment of pouring out the rinse water, off it goes down the drain with no regrets. Another method I tried is soaking fresh squeezed seeds in a strainer covered with kitchen cleanser with bleach (Comet) for about a half hour then scrubbing them clean in the strainer followed by a wash off with anti-bacterial Dawn and a cool rinse in the bowl of water deal. I only saved the sinkers, and when tested, they sprouted at about 90 - 95%. But in that case, I was testing to see if the soak in Comet affected the sprout rate. Also, I cleaned some seeds with Calgon automatic dishwasher detergent similarly to the Comet method described above. The Calgon has a high percentage of phosphates as well as bleach. Again, I only saved the sinkers from the rinse bowl and the test germination rate was above 90%. Lastly, I always follow up with a Clorox bath for any tomato seeds I ferment by the regular process. Basically, I let the cleaned seeds soak for about 5 minutes in one part Clorox to 3 or 4 parts cool water. Then I thoroughly rinse them to get the bleach off to where I can barely smell it. On one particular batch of Cherokee Purple PL seeds that I was sending to Baker Creek for a grow-out, I test germinated 56 seeds and got 52 germinated within 7 days (46 or 48 in the first four days if I remember right). But then I never saved any floaters or tried to sprout them, so all this is rather uncontrolled, unscientific and poorly documented ... so you can take it for what it's worth. Still, I suggest saving the sinkers and trashing the floaters.