For most experienced gardeners and gardeners, preparing and planting tomato seeds for seedlings is a real ritual. It implies the presence of many stages and serious preparatory activities. How to properly prepare and process tomato seeds before sowing?
Cooking seeds
Many mistakenly believe that the preparation of tomato seeds is a mundane and not very important process. However, this is far from the case, since many pathogens of not only fungi, but also other unpleasant infectious diseases that can infect seedlings can survive the winter on tomato seeds. Preparation of seeds for sowing includes such stages as soaking, bubbling, hardening, top dressing, heating, disinfection, dressing.
It all starts with a small seed of a tomato, from which a seedling will soon appear, which will become a strong plant. You should not rush to get boxes for planting seeds, as preparatory activities will take about three days. First of all, before sowing seedlings, it is necessary to sort out planting material – both purchased and homemade. It is necessary to select only those seeds that will be large and will have a symmetrical shape.
How to properly prepare the seeds for the upcoming planting for seedlings? Potassium permanganate is suitable for the implementation of what was planned at the second stage of preparation. Each gardener prepares her solution in different ways, it takes about 15 minutes to keep the seeds in a solution that has the color of ripe cherries, and in no case more, therefore, inadvertent overexposure of seeds may reduce germination properties. Seeds should be placed in a cloth bag. After they stay in a solution of potassium permanganate, do not forget to rinse them with water. This method has proven itself well – before sowing, the seeds must be dipped in a saline solution. After such treatment, strong viable plants will emerge from them in the future.
To feed the seeds for future seedlings, they should be fed with a solution of wood ash at the rate of a tablespoon of the product per liter of water.
For those gardeners who do not have an oven for making ash, specialized stores offer Ideal liquid fertilizer or sodium humate powder. Selected seeds in bags are kept in solution for about 12 hours, after which they are washed with water and left for another day in a warm place. Do not forget about hardening so that your seeds are not afraid of any frosts in the future. To do this, they are transferred to the canopy, underground or refrigerator, where the temperature should be about one to two degrees Celsius. They are left there for two days, after which the bags should be sprayed with water and immediately proceed to planting in the ground.
Performing the shaping
Today, there are several ways to process tomato seeds. Some gardeners use more than one solution to treat tomato seeds at the same time, which causes irreparable harm to seedlings. It should be borne in mind that tomatoes are very demanding on the presence of heat, and their first timid sprouts can appear on the surface as early as a week after planting.
Large companies that sell seeds carry out the so-called calibration. They reject many unnaturally colored seeds, leaving only those with the correct shape and color. For calibration, a 5% solution is used, made from 3 g of table salt per 100 ml of water. In such a solution, it is possible to soak fresh seeds stored for no more than one to two years.
In order to treat the seeds well, you can use special purchased bacterial preparations that help fight infections. On an industrial scale, heat treatment is used quite successfully. For its implementation, tomato seeds must be heated at a temperature of about 40 degrees, the duration of such a procedure is three days. Although it is not easy to maintain the exact temperature regime at home, many gardeners still try to heat the seeds in the oven or on incandescent lamps.
Preparing tomatoes for sowing also involves simple soaking for one or two days in a container, on the bottom of which you need to put gauze or cloth and wait until the seed swells. Water should be poured in such a way that it touches the seeds, but cannot completely hide them. You can treat the seeds before planting with a special solution of stimulants and fertilizers. This process is usually carried out at a temperature of more than 20 degrees.
One of the main methods of processing tomato seeds are bubbling and hardening. The first method involves the enrichment of seeds with oxygen and is able to increase the energy of old tomato seeds. At the same time, they are placed in a bag of gauze, after which they are lowered into a jar of water. The air is supplied by a special compressor for the aquarium. Such processing should take about a day. In order to increase the resistance of future plants to cold weather, a hardening method is used. Seeds should be wrapped in a piece of damp cloth, then placed in a saucer and refrigerated for several days. After they are taken out, they should be sown without prior drying. Thanks to hardening, good quality seedlings appear.
How to wake up the seeds
For awakening, it is recommended to soak in melt water. You can get it by freezing it in the refrigerator or collecting snow in a container to drain the melted water. Together with it, you can get rid of all bad impurities, as well as dirt and salts. It retains its properties for about two days, and it is advised to soak the planting material for approximately 18 hours. After that, for about an hour, it is still necessary to place it in a solution of a special disinfecting preparation. A solution of stimulants, which can be bought today in a specialized store, is also perfect. Immunocytofit and Zircon preparations have proven themselves well. At home, it is quite acceptable to use aloe juice for processing. 
To do this, the leaves are pre-cut and placed in the freezer for five days. It is impossible to violate the order of awakening – first melt water, then disinfection, after which treatment with bioactive agents at a temperature of about 20 degrees. If it is lower, then we can talk about the lower efficiency of this method.
After sowing, boxes with future seedlings must be placed in a warm place. When the first shoots appear, the film is removed from the seedlings and watering begins – when the plants grow a few centimeters. Abundant watering is possible only after the appearance of several full leaves. After that, the plants are seated in separate pots and removed for a couple of days from a sunny place. An important point after the appearance of the third sheet is top dressing. 
At the same time, the roots increase, an inflorescence begins to form. As a rule, when growing seedlings, two top dressings are made at once. The first top dressing is necessary one and a half weeks after the picking process. It is made with a solution that includes 15 g of potassium sulfate, 35 g of superphosphate, 5 g of urea per 10 liters of water. The second top dressing should be carried out after a couple of weeks. Before doing this, combine such components – 10 g of urea, 20 g of potassium sulfate and about 60 g of superphosphate. To feed seedlings in special stores today, complex fertilizers are also offered, containing all the microelements necessary for plants.
Video “Tomato seed processing”
The recording shows how to properly prepare and process tomato seeds before sowing.
