Grow Your Own Magazine

Anyone had success germinating seeds from the supermarket. Was planning to do it with melon - chances are the fruit itself has been chilled during storage so it may have aged already. How fresh can you get away with?

I grow peppers, tomatoes, chillies, garllic and this year I am having an attempt in growing melons all these from supermaket fruit or veg. Germination rate 7/10 for melon and higher for the others. Don't worry about freshness, just choose a nice fruit, scoop the seeds out, wash and dry them and they are ready for planting. Regards
Don Vincenzo

I've got pumpkin seed growing from supermarket saved seed.100% germination. Might of been beginners luck.

Can you do this with peppers and chillies too as I've had no success germinating a batch of old seeds and we eat so many fresh chillies and peppers and all those seeds just seem wasted.

I might try it with the seeds I would normally discard tonight.

Any tips on what to do. Should I dry the chilli seeds or can I just plant them up?

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Thing is supermarket produce probably uses f1 seeds so you're not sure what you're gonna get from the seed. With stuff like melons too it might be better to look for seeds that have as short a fruiting time as possible. Afterall we're not exactly blessed with the sort of weather melons usually like.

Perhaps it might be better finding out the type of pepper or whatever and then buy seed? Good luck with the germination trials though.

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Manda.

"Wouldn't it be nice
For maybe an hour
To not have a care."

i planted some (about 35) cherry tomato seeds from a tescos chery tom (didnt take off the slimy stuff just put them straight in) thinking they wouldnt grow, i now have 35 cherry tom plants that are doing exactly what my alicante toms (seeds from a packet) are doing and they look really healthy im trying peppers and raspberries at the mo as well although i dont have much hope. i planted some melon seeds a few years ago that were from a tesco watermelon but they got too tall and fell over so i'm trying a different type of melon now as i bought a small plant from a garden centre at the weekend

I usual dry my seeds first but perhaps you can try with some fresh and some dry. Three years ago I bought some fresh mixed chillies and from some of their seeds I raised few plants. From them I got enough to supply me and close relatives with fresh chillies, drying some and making 1 gallon of chilly oil. But I have to mention that in order to achieve that the plants have to be in a cool greenhouse as growing them outdoors as peppers, aubergines and melons is a gamble. Don Vincenzo

Tomatoes are easy to grow from supermarket seed and generally stay true to type. Chillies however are very promiscuous and whilst you will get plants, what fruit you get will be to a certain extent a bit of a lottery. Still very useable but not necesarilly true to type

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Kindest regards, David.

http://pigletsplots.blogspot.com/
updated lots - Sunday 28th at 1640hrs

With supermarket sweetpepper seed, I just rinse under tap, then plant straight into 3in pots of compost(usually pop into poly bag on windowledge to germinate).The ones last year grow ok and tasted nicer than the original!!!

I'm growing some garlic from cloves taken from a supermarket bulb. Looks as if it's getting on great.Will let you know and if crop is a success will be growing much more next year.

hi last year i grew melons from the seed i got from a supermarket melon. i grow these in the ploytunnel and they did very well

I've grown loads of tomatoes from supermarket ones. I used to just plant a tomato that had gone slightly squashy and I always got loads of plants and fruit. This year I planted some baby plum tomatoes that I liked but have bought seeds because supermarket varieties are quite limited. I also have lots of plants from a red pepper and will see what the fruit is like. I never buy seed potatoes but plant any that start chitting when I forget about them.

After reading all this have planted some sweet pepper seed so will report how it goes.

be careful using shop bought garlic bulbs as they can often contain eelworm which you will introduce to your garden its always safer to buy proper bulbs from seed sellers same applies for tatty's

Hi Eskimo,

If you avoid the F1 hybrids which can produce very mixed results (which includes most of the dutch bell pepper varieties now on sale), seeds taken fresh from pods and then planted should be fine.

Tesco now have a good selection. Several of my friends have had great success with Tesco's Scotch Bonnets and Thai Hot peppers (both nice and hot!)

My partner in crime wrote a beginners guide to growing chile peppers which you may find useful

http://www.thechileman.org/guide_beginner.php

Mark

I often grow from seeds found this way just for the fun of it.
Most fun so far was a Date palm. I managed to germinate about 4 out of 12 from one of those oblong boxes you get. Two survived and grew quite well but one sadly didn't last the winter inside. I don't think it liked the central heating. The other is back outside but not doing that great. I really must check what conditions it needs. This has reminded me.*guilt* Neverthless it's clearly a Palm and about 2 foot high.
Due to my wonky composting skills I often get squash, melons etc coming up all over the place where least expected. Even a couple of spindly Lemon or Orange seedlings last year but they didn't survive

I've had butternut squash seeds germinating inside the squash from the supermarket before! I really should have planted them out as they'd obviously got off to a good start in the plant! I've had that happen on a couple of occassions now.

I can second that one Willie. A few years ago I successfully grew a couple of chili plants from 'fresh' seed. They were covered in fruits but they just tasted bitter with no heat whatsoever .

I do believe that it was a lack of correct feed that did it though.

Matt.

I've started to pick plum tomatoes from one of the plants grow from a supermarket tomato and they've been very good. The peppers have set more fruit that the ones I grew from 'proper' seed but they're still too small to eat so I'll have to wait and see. I've often got butternuts growing from bought ones but found that they never got going fast enough for the fruit to ripen properly. This year I've got two plants going from the organic catalogue and I've already got a large butternut on one, so I think I'll stick to bought seeds for them in future.

Good results from Chilli, Bell Peppers and Garlic this year. All were sown from Supermarket seed.
A lot of my tomatoes this year are also from tasty ones I enjoyed eating, so saved some seeds.

You may get mixed results from seed saved from F! varieties, but in general tomato seed is indestructible. You could grow seed taken from a tin of tomatoes. Your local sewerage farm is likely to have the best crop of tomatoes, having passed through the human digestive system, the seeds are still viable.

This is the reason I will never put any tomatoes in our compost bin. From past experience, we have had them coming up all over the garden in amongst the ornamentals.

With regard to chilli peppers, I have grown scotch bonnets from saved seed, before the seed companies listed them.

There is also the 'fun' element of germinating an avocado stone, or any of the citrus fruits, etc, etc.

The fun/challenge is getting them to grow. The next step is knowing what the hell to do with them once you've grown them!!

valmarg

Will an avocado do anything in this country? I've had 3 avocado's germinate in my compost bin. Would love to have tried growing them, but I thought you needed a male and female plant (and I'd have no idea how to tell which is which), and I didn't know if the weather here suited them?

I have saved some "temptation" tomato and un-named pointy red "tesco finest" peppers and will see what works, the tomatoes should but the peppers will be a suck it and see test.

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Kindest regards, David.

http://pigletsplots.blogspot.com/
updated lots - Sunday 28th at 1640hrs