Fruit/veg seeds.

At the moment I am very slowly and tentatively getting into a bit of veg growing. One thing that completely overwhelmed me was the huge choice of packets of seeds on offer at my local garden centre. Even more confusing when there are umpteen variants for the same type of veg!

Then I got thinking. A lot of the fruit and veg, such as tomatoes, peppers, chillis, strawberries, raspberries etc etc already come with their own little deposit of completely free seeds within them.

What would happen if you never bought shop bought seeds again and instead just relied on the seeds from the fruit/veg that you've eaten?

Would the quality, size, yield etc all go down over time if you just carried on using seeds from the same generation of plant?

 

You need to ask a genetist, I made that word up.

In general its considered OK to use non F1 hybrid veg seed and collect your own.

But a lot of what you buy in the veg section of the supermarket is likely to be grown from F1 hybrid seed.
So unless its just an experiment I think you're better buying a few packets of seed.

 

I don't think super market seeds are all that bad as bought some seeds from lidl 29p and 49p they seemed to have done well compared to 4pks of seeds£2 each from garden centre I bought last year only a couple out of each pk sprouted it seemed a waste of money maybe the cheap seeds like my garden lol

last year I collect ed my own coriander seeds for this year I hope they sprout or off to get some cheap seeds lol

 

I have used packeted supermarket seed when I've not ordered the ones I want or had a germination disaster and they have been fine, tends to be less choice, but as packeted seeds they will meet UK EU plant health and germination regulations.
The original question was about buying produce and using seed extracted from it for sowing.
If you bear in mind that the seed is unlikely to produce crops like you bought it would be an interesting experiment.
I've known people save seed from chillis with success also tomatoes, which will certainly germinate after being eaten, retrieving the seed would be interesting exercise, but that's about it. Peas, beans and many other crops are in supermarkets before being ripe, some are seedless such as grapes.

 

Errr....the problem with horrible, watery Spanish tomatoes is the method of growing, not just the varieties. They're grown hydroponically in vast greenhouses, just as tasteless strawberries are, so they might actually be quite good if grown traditionally. There's an area near here between two rivers that has been renowned for donkeys' years for it's strawberries but the EU in it's wisdom has decreed that the plants have to be grown hydroponically on shelves from now on, to spare the backs of the fruit-pickers. Ditto the famous Marmande toms, which are now being grown in huge glasshouses which provide a profitable support for solar panels. So it's not necessarily the seed which gives disappointing results
@NigelJ there's no need to eat the fruit beforehand to render it viable. A lot of folks round here just slice a tomato thinly, lay the slices on kitchen roll, remove excess flesh and skin and sow the kitchen roll onto compost. Slightly less messy

 

I've grown peppers from supermarket fruit and, if you buy ripe fruit , Ive found that they germinate faster taken still damp from the fruit, than dried out seeds from packets.

 

There's a guy on you tube who grows fantastically fruit laden plants from the seeds from produce he's bought at the shops, (strawberries, tomatoes and peppers I've seen up to now), on a balcony, using old cut down plastic milk bottles as growing pots! Proper basic, but extremely effective.

There is a clue though as to how he gets all his fantastic growth and yield. He looks Asian, maybe Thai or something like that. His climate would be great for the growth shown in his videos. I'm not sure if plants would thrive like his on an outside balcony in the UK!