greentrhumb, it would be best to post about trading in the Tomato Exchange where all the other posts are about trading and varieties wanted. Look at the top of this first page and above and to the right of the first thread you'll see the link to the TOmato Seed Exchange. Zucchini mentioned she got some older seeds from me ( Hi Martha) and they did fine. I've kept the saved seed of all varieties I've grown since about 1990. I used to do free seed offers here at GW and offer about 150 at a time and seed ages would vary form fresh to maybe 10 years old, no older. I do those seed offers elsewhere now and the one for this year is closed. I just store my seeds at ambient temps and consider germination to be fine up to about 5 yo. Between 5 and maybe 12 years I just double sow. beyond 12 I usually have to use some tricks to get decent germination. My own record in waking up old seeds is 22 yo seed but the documented record is waking up 50 yo seed. Several of us have observed that seed for heart varieties loses viability quicker than others. alamo, I think the better question is how long will TGS offer seeds that germinate well, not how long they keep them before offering them. Linda at TGS does germination tests on the seeds she plans to sell and if they don't do well those seeds are not sold. Glenn at Sandhill Preservation also does germination tests on seeds, but in his case he sells no tomato seed ( 400 varieties) that's older than 2 yo so it's not really a problem. I can't speak in detail to other seed companies as to whether they do germination tests, how they store their seeds or whatever. What is important to know is that if a pack has a packed for date on it that only tells you when the seeds were packed, not when they were produced. That's one of the reasons I like to save my own seed b'c then I know exactly how old they are, But of course that only works with OP not hybrid varieties but I grow mostly OP varieties anyway, Carolyn

Phyllis, if you're growing plants from volunteers, as you said above, there's really no way to know or name the varieties you have. If hybrids,as mentioned above, they don't come true from volunteers or indeed saved F2 seed from the actual fruits. If the initial varieity is open pollinated then there's a chance that the volunteers could be OK, but I think you'd know that once the fruits appear and you can ID them as being a specific variety that you started out with. Every year I used to take 10 volunteers from the field where I was growing tomatoes and transplant them elsewhere, just for fun and to see what I'd get and to see if I could ID them, and sometimes I could, and sometimes not. But I nevere saved seed from them. There are many varieties that are called white, but actually are more ivory in color and the final color can depend on the variety, the degree of foliage cover and the amount of UV. So fruit colors can range from ivory to pale yellow to even a deeper yellow. For me the whitest and best tasting of the large white fruited varieties is White Queen and it actually has some taste to it, which I find is missing in most so called whites that I've grown. This year I'm growing a new white one called Fantome du Laos which someone I know well suggested I grow and sent me the seeds, so we shall see. And yes, you can save seeds from white ones as well, as you asked above. Carolyn

While it is really somewhat questionable to plant seeds from what are almost certainly hybrid tomatoes, since what you get may be a formally edible but unexciting fruit, it should be understood that planting seeds straight out of a plant is not optimal for germination. Mature seeds should be fermented, by placing them in water with some of the pulp and left in a warm place for a week. Then wash off the icky stuff and dry. Tomato seed harvesters know this strategy well. Here's why. When seeds mature, they are naturally encased in a protective gel coating. This is the slippery coating around seeds when they come out of the fruit. That gel coating has a hormone called abscisic acid that actually inhibits germination. That's why when you crack open a mature fruit, the seeds aren't all already sprouting! Microbial fermentation is an easy way to break down that gel, metabolize abscisic acid, and allow germination. Not all seeds have this protective gel. Solanacea and Cucumis commonly do. Some may say that, hey, I can plant mature seeds without fermentation, and they grow fine! That's because sitting moist in soil, especially anaerobically, the gel will break down naturally, But it will require more time, and may not work completely. That gel is natures way of making sure that new seeds don't sprout in the winter, but will wait a while, ideally until spring. FWIW, fermentation can also kill off disease spores.

@dirtygardener It’s just an experimental precaution against disease, which also helps dissolve organic debris somewhat. It also releases copper into the water (especially if something acidic is being zapped, or if you zap for a long time, in which case the water turns blue). Copper is antimicrobial. I hypothesize that copper aside, the zapping also helps, but I make no definitive scientific claims. I think there might be something to some things that Hulda Clark said, but I don’t agree with everything she ever said. I can tell you garden-related anecdotes. For instance, I saved and zapped seeds from tomatoes with anthracnose, and the plants I grew didn’t have anthracnose (whether or not the zapper was the reason). Also, I haven’t seen nearly as many signs of alternaria on tomatoes since I started zapping. They're just a few simple anecdotes from a few uses of zapping, though (not published studies). Whether zapping is ever superior to fermenting, zapping is not always superior to fermenting, but I personally prefer it in most regards. I don’t claim that either method is superior. You can do both to the same seeds, for that matter, should you want to do so (be sure to ferment first, if you do); zapping fermented seeds does make them smell better, anyhow. However, if an extremely high germination rate is your primary concern you’d probably be better off fermenting, whether or not you also zap. Zapping doesn’t distinguish between inviable and viable seeds (while with fermenting, the sunken seeds are usually viable, and only some of the floating seeds are viable). With zapping, you just get them all, the same way you would if using hydrogen peroxide or bleach. However, there are probably loads of other ways to sift out the inviable ones, should we discover them. Fermenting also is kind of like digesting; I think that process wakes some seeds up that would be harder to germinate otherwise. I’m personally confident enough with zapping that I’m no longer anxious about disease in my garden. So, whether or not it technically works, I’m happy. I’ve been very curious if it would cause any mutations in seeds or stuff like that, but I haven’t seen an increased rate of obvious mutation among plants from zapped seeds. In fact, I’ve probably seen more mutations from seeds I haven’t zapped. You’d need a lot more plants to draw any conclusions there. Disease aside, I should try growing several seeds from the same fruit, some zapped, and some not zapped, and observe if there are any obvious differences between the two groups. I'm the only one who uses zappers on seeds, to my knowledge. Here’s what I do: Supplies needed: • A Z4EX (I got mine from zapperguy.net; I’m not affliated with them, nor with any other company) • A 9-volt battery (the ones that read 9.6v on a multimeter are ideal; the Sunbeam ones at the Dollar Tree are fine; rechargeable ones usually read less then 9.6v) • Copper pipes (I got mine from The Home Depot; they cut them to size for me—probably about five inches long each; these aren’t as good as the pipes that come with the zapper, but as zapping things in water can corrode the pipes, you may want some cheap ones for the purpose) • A widemouth quart or pint jar • Tap water • Fruits with seeds • A fine mesh strainer (about 3 to 5 inches in diameter), or a blender • A countdown timer, or a clock • Labeled empty herbal tea bags (if you’re doing multiple kinds of seeds at once) I grow plants, such as tomatoes, watermelon, muskmelons, peppers, ground cherries, wonderberries, Morelle de Balbis, eggplant, tomatillos, West India burr gherkins, and so forth. I remove the seeds from the fruits. How to do this differs depending on the plant. For tomatoes, a fast way is to cut each fruit in half, get a fine strainer, turn the faucet on and wash the seeds from the fruits into the strainer (but the fruit tastes better if you tediously take the seeds out without using water to help). If the seeds have a lot of gel, you can optionally either ferment them first, or else put them in the blender on the lowest setting for a second or two, to remove the gel sacks. The blender method is very effective at removing the gel sakcs, but it does destroy and mar some seeds, however (on some varieties more than others). Instead of fermenting or blending, since I like to get nearly as many seeds per fruit as possible, I usually just use my thumbs and fingers to rub the gel sacks off on the strainer, while I have some water going (it takes some time and effort, and skill, but yeah). The gel sacks don’t always come off perfectly by rubbing, but it’s not the end of the world, since zapping dissolves them somewhat, too (the seeds may stick together when they dry, if it’s not completely gone, but it’s easy to break them apart and get nice-looking seeds without gel on them). I’ve recently taken to using baking soda to assist in removing the gel from some seeds while rubbing (it helps for some varieties more than others). Leaving the gel in its entirely on the seeds should be fine, if you’re confident that zapping works, if you don’t mind sticky seeds. However, gel sacks are said to contain things that inhibit germination (and while my experience tells me tomatoes will sprout with gel sacks on them, I don’t know whether zapping would denature those germination-inhibiting substances). Anyway, then I have a quart or pint wide-mouth jar with two copper pipes in it. I put the cleaned seeds inside labeled empty herbal tea bags. I tie the bags and put them in the jar. I can put up to about 15 kinds of seeds in a jar with the standard I decided to set (although another standard may or may not be as effective). I fill the jar two or three inches with water (maybe a little more sometimes); I make sure all the seeds are wet, and ideally submerged (as long as they’re wet, though, they should get zapped). I attach the zapper’s alligator clips to the copper pipes. I turn the zapper on the 15hz setting for 15 minutes. Directly afterward I turn it on 2.5khz for 15 minutes. Directly afterward, I turn it on 30khz for 15 minutes. Zapping a lot longer doesn’t kill the seeds, in my experience. If the water turns blue, that’s okay (it just means there’s more copper in the water, probably due to acids in whatever you’re zapping). Then I remove the water from the jar and the herbal tea bags (I usually rinse the seeds afterward, but not always). I put the herbal tea bags on brown paper bags on a table in a room with a fan going nearby (to dry). When they’re dry, or when I need to open the bags, I like to put them in those plastic zipper bead bags. When I put the seeds in storage, I put them in a cheap foam cooler in my room. The foam cooler is mostly just a buffer against rapid temperature and humidity changes, while keeping things dark, but it’s also a handy box to put them in. It should be noted that seeds in water will get a strong and thorough zap, due to the water, the small quantity of stuff being zapped, and to how the electrodes are extremely close together. I think my 15 minutes per frequency is probably overkill. 3 minutes per frequency is probably enough to do about the same thing on seeds, but I haven’t tested the 3-minute way more than on one year on a few plants.