Another red cherry tomato

Once again this year, I'm growing a tomato that I have grown and saved for the past couple of years.

A few years ago, I bought a couple of nice looking tomato seedlings from some people who specialise in growing organic  seedlings.  The sellers just said they were red and cherry....

The first year I grew them, they produced a nice crop of cherry tomatoes which proved to be sweet and tasty.

At the end of the season I saved a few of the tomatoes.... but didn't do anything other than wash and dry the seeds.  I cut the tomatoes open and washed the seeds out from the pulp.  Then I dried them in a paper coffee filter.  and put them away.

The following year I grew them again and again they produced a nice crop of bright red cherry tomatoes and again I saved seeds from the three plants I had.

Sadly, over that winter, something happened in my workshop and the envelope the seeds were stored in got wet.   I discovered this in about late January/early February of this year, when I found the seeds all stuck, in a mass, to the envelope.

Eventually, I decide to sow the lot and see what happened.  I simply scraped all the seeds off the paper onto a seed tray of sowing compound, watered it  and left them to it.

To my astonishment I got what must have been a couple of hundred seedlings.

I thinned them down and nurtured them.  I potted them on as they developed, pinching out a dozen tiny seedlings into a pot.  Later I split those pots into individual plants. I gave away some of the pots of 12 and also the individual plants until,eventually, people were crossing the road when I approached for fear of being off loaded with another tomato seedling. 

I called them Ian's Red Cherry Tomato as I felt they had survived unfair stress and I owed them some recognition.

Again, the one's I planted cropped heavily and I saved seeds at the end of the season.  Last year they seemed to crop better than ever and I had great reports from those who had grown on the seedlings foisted upon them.

Now, I'm not the world's best seed saver and, as I have already written on here, again, over last winter I lost many of the seeds, this time by being eaten by mice.  However, emergency action was taken and seeds were saved from some of the later crop and again, I have produced hundreds of seedlings.

I'm just about to put them out in the garden and am looking forward to another good crop of tasty cherry tomatoes.

I'm again intending to save seeds from these tomatoes and offer them under the Blogger's Seed Network.

If any one would like some seeds, please drop me a line at kitchengardeninfrance@gmail.com and I'll keep some for you.