I have tried saving seeds from tomatoes collected in the garden following a hard freeze, thawing them out and thern going forward with a typical seed cleaning and drying program.
Never could get them to sprout.

Contrast this with the fact that I (and many others) preserve our dried and saved seed for many years by storing them in the freezer.

The key difference here is drying. Someone has conjectured that freezing damp or wet seeds results in rupture of the cell walls of the seed, rendering it sterile. I think that is correct.

Freezing tomato seeds when the moisture content has been lowered with silica gel to about a 6-8% moisture level is a common way of storing seeds for long term.

But if the seeds are in contact with high levels of moisture, as they are inside a whole tomato the seeds are usually rendered non viable b'c ice crystals form in the seeds which destroys them.

There have been several folks who have posted here in the past who have frozen whole tomatoes and then posted that the seeds from them were not viable.No harm in letting the seeds go a bit longer, but I wouldn't get your hopes up too high.

Carolyn

FWIW:
I was very bad at cleaning up the tomato mess at the end of the 2008 season.
I'm in Z4b and temp went to -32C (not windchill)that year, and freeze thaw.
In 2009 I had volunteers EVERYWHERE. In the raised beds, and out of the raised beds! Darned things grew under my gravel and through the landscape fabric!
Needless to say, I gathered up every tomato that fell to the ground in 2009. Am crossing my fingers that the tomato jungle doesn't reappear.

mitanoff, that happened b'c when the tomatoes fell to the ground they dried up and were dessicated so were not susceptible to moisture leading to ice crystal formation in the seeds at below freezing temps.

And that's why we have volunteers.

Carolyn

Last spring I froze thousands of tomato and pepper seeds. I seeded them in trays with dry soil, and popped them in an upright chest freezer.

The idea was to be able to seed ahead of time and pull trays out on a schedule as needed. Much like a restaurant pulls food from the freezer as guests order.

The results were pretty good. I would say that in most trays/varieties we knocked down 10% on germ.

I will do it again.

Timmy - but you were freezing already well-dried seeds, right?

Dave

yes, I think if I could blast freeze them it would have worked a little better.

I think in the hour or two that it took to actually freeze the tray etc, there was some moisture issues.

Thanks for the info.

The seeds were from a whole tomato that I stuffed in the freezer for later eating.

At planting time I found I had no BC seeds like I had
thought so I stuffed the seeds from the whole tomato
in some pots. 10 or so seeds in each pot.

Still nothing. About 3 weeks now.

*shrugs*, I guess the parental units will be
getting an ildi instead.

Just one additional comment. When I save seeds I do a thorough drying operation of at least 1 full month indoors before they go into plastic packets and then into the freezer.

I dry them after cleaning/fermentation/recleaning for 1 week
on wax paper. They them flake right off the wax paper and go into plastic cups or jar lids properly labeled for another 3 weeks for final drying. Got to be careful to put them where wind/varmints/children/cleaning spouses/etc. wont mix them up or pitch them out!

I'm sure I am probably overdoing the drying thing, but it's
free and other than the storage hastle works good. I think freeze drying would be a great help for bulk lots--wish I had the means to do it and work out a process.

Larry

"Cleaning Spouses"

Yea, that will usually do it every time!