Preparing tomato seeds for planting

Fully ripe disease-free tomatoes are the best candidates for seed saving. Saving tomato seeds entails nothing more elaborate than squeezing a bit of the seed-gel mix out of the cavity of a tomato fruit into a glass, then air drying them, but fermentation is a better route.

Place seed in a bottle or jar. Fill the container with a couple inches of water. The seed will start fermenting by the next day.

The seed gel contains inhibitors that keep the seeds from sporting while they’re still inside the fruit, but it’s easy to leach and ferment these inhibitors away by adding some water to the seed-gel mix.

Shake the bottle each day and the pulp will come to the top and good seed will go to the bottom. After three days the pulp and bad seed can be drained off, and leaving the good seed that went to the bottom. Rinse the seed and place on cloth or paper towels to dry.
Preparing tomato seeds for planting

Pineapples Harvesting

Pineapples Harvesting
Pineapples grow in plants developed from crowns top leafy portion of the fruit or from slips and shoots of the plant. The fruit matures in about 1.5 years, but in climates where pineapples is harvested for purpose of canning, planting times staggered such that some fruit reaches maturity and is harvested each month of the year.

There are two main varieties of pineapple. The red Spanish variety is grown mainly in Florida and the West Indies, as well as some other countries, and is used in the United States as the fresh product. The smooth cayenne variety is grown mainly in Mexico and Hawaii. The red Spanish variety, when ripe, is more acid and contains less sugar than does the smooth cayenne type. When ready for harvesting for purpose of canning, the smooth cayenne variety has about 0.5 – 0.6% acid (calculated as citric acid) and 10 – 12% sugar. The fruit is broken from the stalk. If the fruit is to be handled as fresh, it is placed in crates or trucks for transportation to the processing plant. If the fruit is to be canned, the crowns are broken off prior to placing in trucks or in crates and trucks.

Pineapples to be used as fresh may harvested in the matured green or ripe condition. They are packed in crates and air-cooled to 45 – 55 degree F. In this condition, the mature green fruit has a storage life 3 – 4 week, while the ripe fruit has a storage life of 2 – 4 weeks. Spoilage of fresh fruit is usually caused by fermentation due to the growth of yeasts or molds.
Pineapples Harvesting