I have saved garden seed for many years.
For several seasons now I have been too lazy to start tomatoe seeds, buying plants from the store instead. Ive never been impressed by the varietys offered by the store. Decided I would start some old favorites from my seed cache.
I started 30 paper cups of tomatoe seed. Every cup had four seeds in it. I started 4 varietys of open pollinated saved seed, and one variety of store bought hybred seed.
These seeds were 10 and 11 years old. I have thinned the seedlings down to two plants per cup. I didnt count germination rate, but figure it was 90%.
Also while rummaging through my seed cache I found an envolope of store bought hybred tomatoe seed. From the year 2000. There were 5 seeds in the envolope so I planted those. Three of those 20 year old seeds have germinated.
Whats the oldest seed you've had success with?
Any interesting history of any seed you save?

i have 288 red solo cups goin right now.never saved seeds like i shoulda for years.

Teat test test

I thought hybred wont reproduce fruit ?, I try it one year an great plants lots of flowers no fruit ?

they will produce fruit but it won't be what they were the year before.

I’ve been using heirloom seeds. They grow what they grew the year before. We generally save more seed than we need each year. A lot more actually. The heirlooms cost more initially, but it’s a one time expense.

Great thread. It's a fun hobby, saves money and feels like a good idea nowadays. We save a lot of seed - flowers, grasses and shrubs for our business and more and more veggies for the home garden.

We've had good luck with 3-4 yo veggie seeds, smaller seeds tend to hold up better than larger ones. I don't have experience saving seed from hybrids. We store in paper bags in a cool dry room. Veggies we seed into soil blocks.

The way I understand it is, an open pollinated seed will produce fruit true to the mother plant. An heirloom seed is an open pollinated seed that has been saved, passed down for fifty years or more. I save heirloom seeds, with the exception of one open pollinated varity I lucked into that that produces true. Its not old enough yet to be an " heirloom".
I don't grow hybred anything. I had some store bought hybred seed which I tryed for a high volume producer, which it is. Ill grow it this year as its early and a good producer.
Never save seed from hybred plants as you never know what you'll get.
Also not hard to do with tomatoes, but other vegtables, for instance my winter squashs, I plant different varitys as far apart as possible to cut risk of cross pollination. Which is hybredization.

Hybrids are what are known as F1 generation plants. They will all have nearly identical traits. When you save those seeds you will most likely be very disappointed with the F2 generation and beyond generations as they will have a smorgasbord of characteristics and likely few to none will be anywhere near the quality of the parent.

Heirloom varieties are going to be true to type generation to generation. Many heirlooms date back 100's of years.

I have been making landrace seeds for over a decade, by seed saving. Point being every year you save seed and grow a new generation the strain becomes more adapted to you enviroment

I have a buttload of dill seed saved from last year. I planted it mainly to attract black swallowtails but didn't attract much.
I like Brandywine tomatoes, but only had good luck the first year. They are an odd distorted fruit but man are they good.

I ran into an old Italian neighbor from my childhood. He stopped at the house a few days later to drop me off some of his seeds. There were some for big pink tomatos, big Romas that came from Italy, bell peppers, and some pole bean seeds. I’ve been collecting seeds from these plants every year, probably been doing it for better than ten years now.

I save seeds, even some hybrids will come back pretty true. One thing is if you plant different varieties close, they will cross pollunate and you can end up with a hybrid.

Yes two heirloom varieties planted close together can give you a hybrid. I had two tomato varieties that I was growing from saved seed. One was a large reddish purple cherry tomato that grew in a cluster. The other was a yellow medium sized tomato that was great tasting. Sadly I lost both, i had planted all the seeds and the plants blighted and died.

WI55 is one of my favorite tomatoes it was developed by the University of WI good fruit and the first slicer to ripen for the year here. can have tomatoes by early July where with many others it's august.

when you only get 3 months of tomato season those first few taste so good.

I save seed , I have about 5 different beans and a friend gave me another. I save tomatoes , radishes , lettuce , kale , but this year I got some turnips flowering right now. Might as well learn how to save them so you don't have to buy them all the time. I got a friend that has a hot pepper that has never been changed and it's still in it's wild state. He got a order for the seed from George Washington's Mount Vernon horticulture department , because it was grown at the estate.

Mud tracker: Dang, thats too bad you lost those good tomatoes.
Mask bandit: I'll look up that Mount Vernon seed, thanks. There are alot of seeds that have a long interesting history.

Say mudtracker, you being from Minn. Have you ever heard of a cantaloupe called Minnesota Midget?
I have grown this cantaloupe for several years. Short season and very favorable. Bout the size of a softball fit in the lunchbox.

Loup loup, Yes I have, I think I have grown it before. I am not great at growing melons though.

I meant to say he sold seed to Mount Vernon. My friend is part of Seed Savers Exchange , he gives me free samples.