When I started this hydroponic tomato experiment, I was amazed by the effectiveness of the cultivation method. I was able to grow cherry tomatoes from seeds and harvest lots of fruit without much effort. I still harvest tomatoes from the plants, but I would like to take a temporary break from reporting about them.

Each time I pick the cherry tomatoes I check their taste. The number of tomatoes harvested has been increasing recently, and they have made me feel stuffed. Now I’ll show you how I saved the seeds: I chose large and well-formed seeds out of the harvested cherry tomatoes to save for the next season. Since the tomato seeds I used for this experiment were not of a filial generation, using the seeds from those tomatoes for the next cultivation will enable me to harvest a similar quality of cherry tomatoes.

How to save seeds from the fruit:
1. Scoop out the seeds from the fruit and put them into a tea filter bag. You can put the seeds together with the gel surrounding them.
2. Wash the tea filter bag with running water. Gently rub the bag so that only seeds will remain in the bag.
3. Drain off the water and dry the bag in an airy place.

Above is the method of saving tomato seeds. You can use the saved seeds to grow cherry tomatoes again. To check whether or not sprouts grow from the seeds, I sowed the seeds.

In the picture above, cherry tomato seeds were planted in the right row of sponges, while bell pepper seeds were planted in the left. The pepper seeds were saved from a pepper I bought at a supermarket. I was not sure if the pepper seeds could germinate. For detailed information about seeding, please refer to my first article of this experiment, Hydroponic Tomato Experiment – Seeding.

The picture below is from 20 days after the seeding.

The tomato sprouts came out around 10 days after the seeding. As you can see, roots are growing under the sponges. The picture above was taken 20 days after the seeding. As you can see, the germination rate of the tomatoes was 100 percent.
It seems that bell peppers germinate later than cherry tomatoes. I almost gave up on the peppers but 20 days after the seeding, a sprout of pepper came out of the sponge. I found that other pepper seeds germinated in the sponge as well. I was able to germinate these plants without effort.