Did you borrow seeds from the Los Alamos Community Seed Library this year? Whether you borrowed seeds from the library or grew a variety of your own, it's harvest season for many of our vegetables. It is especially good to collect seeds from your favorite and tastiest tomatoes every year so you will have familiar and delicious varieties next year. And when you have extra seeds, please remember you can always bring them back to the Seed Library to be repackaged and shared throughout the community. Spread the bounty!

Below is an article from Catherine Hensley, one of our excellent leaders in the Los Alamos Community Seed Library Committee. Catherine's specialty is growing a large number of varieties of tomatoes and she is a wealth of information. Should you ever participate in a Seed Library event at the library, look for Catherine to get all your tomato questions answered!

It's that time of year again:

Time to collect tomato seeds for next year's garden!

Tomatoes are mostly self-pollinating, making them a perfect choice for saving your own seeds. In spite of what you may have heard, if you start with an "open pollinated," often heirloom variety instead of a hybrid (indicated by "F1" or similar on the package), you will be able to collect seeds and grow the same variety from those seeds for years to come. And even seeds from hybrids will grow plants, the seeds will NOT be sterile in tomato hybrids but the tomatoes grown from those seeds may not look like the tomato you collect the seeds from.

I have been saving seeds from some Russian commercial varieties for more than 25 years. They were bred to grow in short-season areas and I always get a harvest with minimum effort (when the deer don't eat all of my plants and fruits). But I'm always looking for something new. My tried-and-true short-season varieties include red and pink medium-sized fruit, and red, pink, and yellow small-sized fruit, but I'm always looking for a nice sandwich-sized tomato, and more colors.

To save tomato seeds, squish the jell and seeds into a container. I use small jelly jars because I have them, but use what you have. (Eat the de-seeded tomatoes, of course.) The seeds have a bio-film of the jell around them at this stage, and a little bit of fermenting will free them. However, many people save the seeds without this step and have good luck sprouting them later. This fermenting step can prevent the spread of some tomato diseases, though.

The jell and seeds mixture will develop some mold naturally if you let them sit out, but you can speed this up with a few grains of yeast, if you have baking yeast in the house. Either way, add a bit of water to your seeds to make a slurry, and either add the yeast or just let it sit out, uncovered, until you see either some bubbling/foam or a few bits of mold, 3-5 days. HAVING MOLD IN THE JAR DOES NOT MEAN THE SEEDS ARE RUINED. This is really part of the process. Then add more water, swirl it around a bit, and pour off the liquid and stray solids (and mold, if you have any), retaining the seeds. I then pour the seeds onto a glass plate to dry. Some people pour onto a paper towel or coffee filter to dry, but the seeds will stick to the paper as they dry. Then you can tear off bits of the paper with seeds on them, and plant the paper and seed together. I pop the dried seeds off of the glass with a fingernail and store in a recycled medicine jar.

Label your saved seeds. I include when I first started saving the seeds,where I originally got them, what year they were grown most recently, when they ripen, and special notes:

Cherry Tomato Mandurang Moon

Yellow/white

Victory Seeds/Dwarf Tomato Project 2018

Grown 2023

Larger cherry tomato, good flavor, ripens in early August

—From the garden of Cahterine Hensley.

For more tips on saving seeds of all kinds, visit the Los Alamos Community Seed Library's Facebook Group. You'll find all the past tips and advice from the committee members—from how to start your seeds in winter, chosing the best plants to sow, learning to identify local weeds in your garden, and much more!