You can take the seeds from open-pollinated tomatoes to sow a new crop. The newly seeded tomato plants will be exactly the same as the plant from which you picked the tomato. That is very useful, because it means you can harvest seed every year from the varieties you like.

If you buy tomato seeds, how do you know if you have bought a stabilized seed variety or not? If you see ‘F1’ in front of the name of the variety, then the strain does not have stabilized seed. If it does not have an F1, then the seed is open-pollinated.

(F1 stands for ‘filial, first generation’ hybrid.) An F1 is a cross between 2 open-pollinated seed varieties. Making an F1 is hard work because the pollination must be done by hand. In one of the open-pollinated varieties, you remove the flower, with the pollen stamens (the male organ) attached, before the stamens are ripe, leaving the pistil [female organ] in place. Then you collect pollen from the other open-pollinated variety and dust it over the pistil of the plant which has had its flower removed. The pollinated pistil can now grow a tomato. The seed that develops in this tomato is a new F1 variety.

Supermarket tomatoes are all F1 varieties. If you harvest and sow seed from these tomatoes, you will get all sorts of plants that have inherited different characteristics from both open-pollinated parents. This is of no use to professional growers because uniformity is important for working efficiently and harvesting many kilos of tomatoes. If you don’t mind having tomato plants that are slightly different from each other, you can grow tomatoes from the seeds of tomatoes or another F1 variety. If you harvest the seeds every year from the finest and best plants of this F1 tomato variety, you will end up with a uniform open-pollinated seed variety. It takes 7 generations (7 years!) before a tomato is really pure and uniform. That’s quite a long time, but after that you do have your own tomato variety. 😊

In general, an F1 variety has more vigor, it is healthier and you can harvest more fruit from F1 plants than from a open-pollinated seed variety.

In the past, many families or regions had their own tomato variety. These varieties were passed on from generation to generation. These very old tomatoes, with open-pollinated seed, are called heirloom varieties. They were often selected for their good taste and vigorous growth in a certain area.

Whether a tomato is an heirloom variety is stated on the seed packaging. As with all open-pollinated type tomatoes, you can harvest your own seeds from heirloom varieties.

Because heirloom varieties are often special, due to their taste or appearance, nowadays some undeserving open-pollinated tomatoes are offered as heirloom varieties, because the name sells well.

I would love to be able tell you a nice story about our own heirloom tomato variety, but sadly, I cannot. Both my father and grandfather were tomato growers but, unfortunately, they always bought their seed from seed companies. 😢

However, a Romanian friend of mine gave me seed from his own family’s heirloom tomato. This particularly tasty, pink beef tomato has been in his family for a very long time. His mother gave him the seeds, and she had been given them from her own mother, etc. Because his family did not name this old variety, I called it Romania Pink. It’s real fun growing these kinds of old varieties, especially when you know the story behind them.

When you are deciding on which tomato variety to sow, I would not worry about whether it is a open-pollinated, F1 or heirloom tomato. So long as the plants give delicious, healthy, lots of beautiful fruit, it’s all good. The advantage of the open-pollinated and heirloom varieties is that you can harvest their seeds every year. But an F1 variety is often stronger and has more vigor.