Tag Archives: black krim

Concrete Jungle: Jay’s Pop-up Tomato Shop, Instructions Included

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The tomatoes I started from last year’s seeds took off.  I fixed a three-bulb lamp about 20 years older than I am with CFLs and kept it on the guys all day for about four weeks, and produced this.

So I was left with sixteen seedlings (Beefsteak, Cherokee Purple, Black Krim, and Hillbilly varieties) that I decided to give away to passers-by on a Sunday afternoon, re-potting instructions included.  It was all so very Golden Age of Brooklyn, what with an ethnic and sexual-preference spectrum that would make a recruiter for a small liberal arts college weak in the knees, and folks ranging in age from about their 60s down to the seven.  Pascal, Naomi, Erin, and Pepe were amongst the takers.  I promised everybody I’d include care instructions.  So….

Caring for tomatoes is pretty easy.  You’ve got some gear you need, but you can DIY  share of it, and once you own it, you can keep reusing it. Continue reading →

Concrete Jungle: Easy-Peasy Seed Saving for Next Year

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I’ve been meaning to save my own tomato seeds for years.  It always felt like one of those things that was not merely a good idea but a full-on AWESOME, supremely Jay kind of thing to do.  But, probably for curious reasons that are worth me pondering further in solitude, I never found the time to learn do it.  It was proving to be a bit like learning to bend notes on the harmonica.

Except that bending notes on the harmonica is really tough, and saving your tomato seeds is shockingly easy.

All you do is…

  1. scoop seeds out of your tomatoes and cover them in a cup with maybe an inch of water,
  2. cover the opening of the cup with a paper napkin or towel to let them breath,
  3. remind yourself over the coming days that the mold soon growing across the water and your seed goop is perfectly normal,
  4. remove the seeds after a week or all of the seeds have sunk to the bottom of the glass on their own,
  5. wash them clean in running water,
  6. dry them on the counter, turning to make sure all sides dry,
  7. and pop them in the freezer wrapped safe in an envelope, stored for planting next Spring.

Like most vegetable (i.e. – fruit) seeds, tomato seeds are covered in a protective waxy coating.  In the wild (and this is all my personal deduction), this coat ensures they survive until they’re safely nestled in the ground.  Then the weather and soil wear the coating away so the seeds can sprout into new plants. Continue reading →