Saving your own seeds from your favourite tomatoes and (chilli) peppers is easy. They hardly ever cross-polinate and unless they are an F1* variety, then they will come true year upon year.
The process is simple. Cut open the ripe pepper or tomato, scoop out the seeds and let them dry on kitchen paper. Once dry, store with your other seeds in an envelope or wrapped in the kitchen paper. I like to write the variety and year on the paper. Pictured is chili Hot Tomato.
Tomatoes are of course surrounded by a lot more moisture than peppers and their seeds often dry up glued to the kitchen paper. I have saved seeds like this for years and when it comes to sowing the seeds, I just tear up the kitchen paper and put the kitchen paper with seed into the compost. It has worked every time.
I suggest to have at least two tomatoes or peppers that you save seed from, just in case one of them didn’t produce good seeds. It also means that you can be quite generous when sowing.
Oh, and do wear gloves or oil your hands if you are saving chilli seeds. I thought I’d be ok and now my eyes, nose and lips all itch because my hands have touched them. I didn’t even eat the chilies as I put them in the freezer!
*F1 seeds are hybrid seeds that are the result of cross pollinating two different varieties. In genetics, “F1″is an abbreviation for Filial 1 – literally “first children.” If you save the seeds of an F1 plant, your seeds are going to be F2 ie the “second generation children” and some characteristics may revert back to one or the other grandparent. If you like to experiment, then do save F1 plant seeds. You may get some interesting plants as a result!