We have been living on Lotan for two months and one week. Our garden has been growing steadily over this time and we have harvested many greens for salads and stir-fry. In the past few weeks, many more of the plants have started springing up and there have been a number of classes during which we snacked on fresh corn rather than fruit from the dining hall. We are all starting to understand the plant families, what grows well together, and how long it takes different plants to grow. We know the importance of flowers (some help fix the soil-sunflowers; and others invite helpful bugs to the garden) and we know how to save our seeds to, hopefully, produce the same or better results during the next growing season.

Along with this newfound knowledge and comfort with the garden comes our excitement to share with tourists what we have learned. Yesterday, a group of tourists walked by as we were cleaning the last bits of goop off the tomato seeds we were working on saving. I was hanging out in the wheelbarrow, which I have found is one of the more comfortable chairs in a garden-the angle of the back of the wheelbarrow is perfect for the back. A few women stopped and we explained to them, as they took our picture (which is always funny but also slightly awkward-these women will go home and show her friends pictures of us sitting in a wheelbarrow and crowded around a small bowl of tomato seeds floating in water), how to save tomato seeds. One of them said, “But saving seeds takes too much time!”

Hey you guys! Guess what! It doesn’t take that much time! And it saves your money! Not saving seeds seems silly to me now. All you have to do is find a decent tomato on your plant, or a decent fruit from which ever plant you wish to save (a flower sometimes holds the seed… see below) and keep them until next year. I guess, in the case of the tomato, it might be a little messy because the seeds are attached to the goo inside the tomato, but wouldn’t you rather save your own seeds, even if you get a bit messy in the process, rather than spending money on the gas to get to the store, spending money on the seeds at the store, and then spending money on the gas to get back home-a length of time that would most likely equal more than the length of time it takes to remove the tomato seeds and place them in water. It would defiantly take more time than harvesting dry seeds. So why not?