Rules for preparing tomato seeds for sowing seedlings
Cooking seeds
Many people mistakenly believe that preparing tomato seeds is a routine and not very important process. However, this is far from the case, since many pathogens not only of fungi, but also of other unpleasant infectious diseases that can infect seedlings are able to survive the winter on tomato seeds. Seed preparation for sowing includes such stages as soaking, bubbling, hardening, feeding, warming up, disinfection, dressing.
It all starts with a small tomato seed, from which seedlings will soon emerge, which will become a strong plant. You should not rush to get the boxes for planting seeds, since the preparatory measures will take about three days. The first step before sowing seedlings is to sort out the planting material - both purchased and homemade. It is necessary to select only those seeds that are large and have a symmetrical shape.
How to properly prepare the seeds for the upcoming planting for seedlings? To implement the plan at the second stage of preparation, potassium permanganate is suitable. Each gardener prepares its solution in different ways, it takes about 15 minutes to keep the seeds in a solution that has the color of a ripe cherry, and in no case more, therefore, unintentional overexposure of the seeds may decrease the germination properties. The seeds should be placed in a cloth bag. After they are in the potassium permanganate solution, 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 appear from them in the future.
To feed 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 a furnace for making ash, specialized stores offer liquid fertilizer "Ideal" or powder sodium humate. 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 no frost will be terrible for your seeds in the future. To do this, they are transferred to a canopy, an underground floor or a refrigerator, where the temperature should be about one to two degrees Celsius. Leave them there for two days, after which the bags should be sprayed with water and immediately proceed to planting in the ground.
Treatment
Today, there are several ways to treat tomato seeds. Some gardeners use more than one solution to treat tomato seeds at the same time, thereby causing 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 already a week after planting.
Large companies that sell seeds carry out the so-called calibration. They discard many unnaturally colored seeds, leaving only the correct shape and color. For calibration, a 5% solution is used, made from 3 g of sodium chloride per 100 ml of water.In such a solution, it is possible to soak fresh seeds that are stored for no more than one to two years.
In order to etch the seeds well, you can use special purchased bacterial preparations that help fight infections. Heat treatment is used quite successfully on an industrial scale. For its implementation, tomato seeds must be warmed up 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 warm the seeds in the oven or on incandescent lamps.
Preparing tomatoes for sowing also involves simple soaking for one to 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 could not 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 is bubbling and hardening. The first method involves enriching the 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, and then dipped 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. The 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, sowing should be done without prior drying. Thanks to hardening, good quality seedlings appear.
How to awaken the seeds
To wake up, it is recommended to soak in melt water. You can get it by freezing it in the refrigerator or collecting snow in a container in order to then 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 about 18 hours. After that, for about an hour, it is still necessary to place it in a solution of a special disinfecting drug. A stimulant solution, which you can buy in a specialty store today, is also great. The preparations Immunocytofit and Zircon 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. The order of awakening must not be disturbed - first, melt water, then disinfection, after which treatment with bioactive agents at temperatures of about 20 degrees. If it is lower, then we can talk about less 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-fledged leaves. After that, the plants are planted in separate pots and removed from a sunny place for a couple of days. An important point after the appearance of the third leaf is top dressing. 
At the same time, the roots increase, an inflorescence begins to form. As a rule, when growing seedlings, two dressings are made at once. The first feeding is necessary one and a half weeks after the picking process. It is made with a solution containing 15 g of potassium sulfate, 35 g of superphosphate, 5 g of urea per 10 liters of water. The second feeding should be done 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.For feeding seedlings in special stores today, complex fertilizers are also offered, containing all the trace elements necessary for plants.
Tomato seed treatment video
The entry shows how to properly prepare and process tomato seeds before sowing.