Planting pieces of tomato or pepper.

[happyflowerlady]

I have had volunteer tomatoes that came up from overripe tomatoes that fell off of the vine, and were left on the ground overwinter, but it never occurred to me to actually plant tomatoes that way. I was reading a FB post from a friend of mine, and she was describing cutting up the tomato into wedges, and then planting the wedge, and she said she always plants that way.
In my refrigerator right now, are some salad sized tomatoes that are getting too ripe to put in salads, and a little packet of cherry tomatoes. Tomorrow, I am going to take them out and plant them in my garden and see how they grow.
She said she also plants peppers this way. I have done a similar thing with saving the cantaloupe seeds and then planting them, and they grew just fine, so I will be trying this with produce that has developed seeds, and hope they grow.

 

[papillon]

This sounds an interesting and very natural way of planting seeds, but don't you get a lot of plants coming up in one place using this method? Can you thin them out and transplant them successfully?

 

[claudine]

I've never heard of this method before, it seems very convenient, I like it. This way you know for sure that you didn't miss any seeds. I'll definitely give it a try, I always have plenty of delicious tomatoes at home

 

[Gina145]

I've never heard of planting whole wedges of tomatoes. We just squeeze the tomatoes so that the juice and the seeds run out into the soil. That way you get the seeds spread over a larger area.

 

[happyflowerlady]

Squeezing the tomatoes seems like a way that would work also, and you could still use the rest of the tomato if it was not overripe. I think with the cherry tomatoes, I will need to plant each one whole just to be sure, since they are so small.
I think that if several came up in one place, it would be easy to transplant the extra ones someplace else, so it would be a good way to get them all started at once.
I guess it is time to go and get a cantaloupe, so I can plant see of those seeds also. And I have some ripe peppers, so I am also going to try planting the seeds from the peppers.
I am excited to see how well this idea works !

 

[zigs]

It would help if you knew the variety of the tomato, you could then google it to find out if its a vine or bush variety, also if its an F1 hybrid (wont produce fruits true to type)

Still, always a bit of fun with the unknown

 

[Kansas Terri]

I took the seeds out of a lovely orange bell pepper this year and I planted them immediately in pots that I put on a hot pad. I got excellent germination.

Well, it has been unusually cool and wet where I live, and when I moved the seedlings outside they have just sat there and sulked. I still only have 2 true leaves on each plant! I have started planting them anyways, and I hope that they will pick up. If I bought seedlings I would get MUCH bigger pepper plants but it would not be as much FUN!

I really want to taste the fruit that I get from the pepper seedlings: I cannot wait to see what they will be like!

I have also done this with tomatos, and while every tomato I have raised that way has been good, they have sometimes been a bit different from the parent plant. Some people say not to plant the seeds of hybrids, because you never know what you will get, but I think it adds to the fun. Sometimes the fruit is identical to the parent plant, and sometimes it is not!

 

[zigs]

I've grown a few peppers this year too, seed was from Italy, just called Peperoni

Also got 3 tomatoes in the greenhouse that sprouted from seeds in the homemade compost, no idea what they'll turn out like

 

[zigs]

Pic of the greenhouse, most of the earlier plants have been hardened off and planted out now. This lot will mostly be staying in for the season