(1) If you plant tomatoes yourself, you can save the leftover seeds for
several years, so you should have a ready supply to share. I have had 10
year old tomato seeds sprout with better than 50% germination.

(2) Tomato seeds are easy to extract from tomatoes. Take out the seeds
and place in water for a few days. They will ferment a bit. Scrape off
the gunk and spread the seeds on a piece of paper to dry. You can eat
the tomato that's left over from this operation. The only disadvantage
to this is that if you start with a hybrid tomato, you may not get the
same thing when you grow the plant from the seeds (although it will most
likely be similar, and almost certainly edible).

(3) Buying cheap seeds is counterproductive. They're cheap for a reason.
Ten cent packages probably have lower germination rates than fresh
seeds, although tomatoes have less of this problem than other
vegetables. Also, the postage to send the seeds to the caribbean will
far exceed the cost of cheap seeds, so you can afford to spend a bit
more on the seeds. You can share a packet of fresh seeds.

(4) If your relative wants only a couple of tomato plants, a cheap seed
packet would probably work, but when planting any vegetable it's best to
select the seeds on the basis of the resulting fruit, not the price of
the packet. If your relative wants a lot of plants it would be better to
start with fresh seed to ensure better productivity.



Cindi wrote:

A relative in the Caribbean asked me to send them some tomato seeds.
Normally, I could find them in Big Lots and Walmart for $0.10 a pack
but it is currently out of season.

Looking for a mail order web site that has similar pricing and low
shipping prices.