Don't be fooled. Inside this thin coating of sweetness is a fiery core of total insanity.

Monday, November 14, 2011

Free Tomato Seeds

Most years I save my tomato seeds for the tomatoes that I liked best, to grow next year. I did that again this year, and I have so many that I want to share them with my readers. Some I have more of than others. Each packet will have about 15 seeds in it, and they are meant for home veggie gardeners only. In my experience, most home gardeners don't need more than 15 seeds. I did a germination test, and the germination rate was really good. I took pictures of the tiny little sprouts in their wet paper towels, and I'll include them at the end of the post.

Here are the varieties I have seeds for:

Gogoshari Striped -- Indeterminate 80 days to maturity (90% germination rate)

This knobbly fruit has few seeds and little juice, and open, empty spaces inside (kind of like my head when I haven't had a good night's sleep).

Tigerella -- Indeterminate 76 days to maturity (100% germination rate)

Tigerella, a very prolific variety for me

Black Krim -- Indeterminate 75 days to maturity (100% germination rate) -- these tomatoes do have a tendency to be cat-faced, so not all are as pretty as these.

Black Krim



Ukrainian Heart -- Indeterminate 85 days to maturity (100% germination rate)


Ukrainian Heart

Tigerella and Ukrainian Heart were my two favorite tomatoes for this growing season. I like Ukrainian Heart because the fruits are large, a good size for slicing and using on cheese and tomato sandwiches. I like Tigerella because it produced a lot of fruit, in big clusters rather like a cherry tomato, but the tomatoes themselves were bigger than cherry toms.

Send me an email (alison dot conliffe at gmail dot com, I think my profile on Blogger includes an email link too) with your address and I will send the seed packets out to you in the mail, at my postal expense. I don't know the rules for shipping internationally, even to Canada, so please, just U.S. residents. I don't want to get in trouble with the vegetable import/export authoritaries.

Here are my germination test pictures. To test germination I picked out ten good-looking, plump, healthy seeds and folded them up in a damp paper towel, then put the paper towel into a ziploc bag, zipped it closed, and set the bags on top of my fridge for about a week. At the end of the week, I opened them out and counted how many had sprouted. (When you're a math dunce like me, using ten seeds helps with figuring out the germination percentage.)

Only one failed to sprout

Ten sprouts -- Hurray!


It may be hard to see in the picture, but there are in fact ten sprouts here too.

And ten more!

Disclaimer: I don't know what kind of response I'll get, but keep in mind, when I run out, I run out. I'll try to let you know if I can't fulfill your request.