This year's tomatoes can yield next year's fruits

If you've been picking some particularly tasty tomatoes from your garden, get ready now for a repeat performance next summer by saving seeds.

Sure, next year you could order seeds and grow you own transplants or buy transplants, just as you did this year. But what if the place where you bought the transplants doesn't carry that particular variety next year, or the seed company no longer carries those seeds?

Newer varieties of tomatoes, just because they are new, often upstage older ones, sometimes making it difficult to buy transplants or seeds of some of the very tastiest heirloom tomato varieties. That's why seeds or transplants of delectable tomatoes such as Rose de Berne, Carbon, and Belgian Giant, for example, are hard or impossible to find.

Saving your own tomato seeds is an easy way to get around this problem. The only exceptions would be hybrid varieties and the few varieties that don't self-pollinate, such as potato-leaf types (Brandywine, for example) and small, delectably sweet currant tomatoes.

No need to sacrifice your best tomato fruits. Choose a fruit and slice it in half, not through the stem end but the other way. The seed-containing locules are now staring at you, so turn each fruit half upside down over a glass and squeeze enough to dribble out the seeds. Now go ahead and eat the tomato.

Sprouting inhibitors around the seeds are why tomato seeds don't germinate within the juicy fruits. You need to get rid of these inhibitors by adding a little water to the tomato mush and then letting it ferment. After two or three days, pour the seeds into a fine strainer, then rinse them and shake off the excess water.

Spread the moist seeds on a paper towel and leave them in a dry place. A protected spot in sunlight or a gentle fan will speed drying. After a couple more days, scrape the dry seeds off the paper towel and put them into a labeled envelope -- your ticket to another summer of tomato heaven.