Judy is the bomb!! **big smile** (((HUGZ))) you can go to sams club if you have one near by and buy a box of them that's what i did, its much cheaper! LOL, then after you start trading, save your envi's, you won't have to buy anymore! trust me on tht! i had a whole huge kitchen trash bag full of them!! LOL one time i had two of them full!! i thought i'd need them, so i saved them (i wasn't trading for a bit) LOL ya, i ended up throwing them away, hubs said throw them away!!!! man, he was furious!! LOL so save them! they may look alittle used, but they are reusuable, i used aknife to open mine, LOL and i sometimes either used scotch tape or stapled them shut, as for the baggies, i use walmart little baggies (100/99 cents in the hobbies) and i made some using the method they showed, and pumkingal? she had a whole page on how to make them and so did quiltingfox. its very economical! LOL especially if you get lots of magazines! LOL

There is a fast growing industry in collecting and composting organic waste, especially food scrap. So bagged compost is not just going to be manure anymore, it's yard trimmings, tree limbs and food scrap. Some contamination is inevitable. Lots of the food scrap haulers use compostable can liners, but not all, so you may find bits of plastic now and then. Plastic itself is merely a nuisance in the garden, not a toxic problem. If you're concerned about what else goes in, keep bugging the producer and ask them what their inputs are.

So if you are only saving seed for your own use and don't care that 2 to 5% of the seeds may be crosses you don't have to take any special precautions, but if you want to be certain of a pure strain you do. I wonder how many commercial companies and seed traders actually do have pure strains and take all the recommended precautions. I know I have a few big black bumblebees that visit my tomato blossoms, but I'm glad they do because I read that production can be increased by 50% if tomatoes are insect pollinated, and the tomatoes will be bigger because they have more seeds in them because more pollen was deposited, size being directly related to number of seeds. **** I think the article in the FAQ here about how to prevent x pollination is an excellent one. Seed Companies: Some do their own seed production, some subcontract out, some buy wholsale off the shelf and some do a combo of any of those tree methods of obtaining seed. And some who do their own seed production use adequate geographic isolation and others aren't able to. I used to do a wrong varieties thread here and certain companies rose to the top in terms of the least amount of crossed seed. Crossed seed is most prevalent amongst those who trade seeds. Cross POllination; it can vary widely depending on where someone lives, the specific pollinators in the area, the weather and much more. It's Halictid bees, tiny sweat bees that do most of the X pollination where it exists. For an excellent article on tomato cross pollination go to Southern Exposure Seed Company and look for the article by Dr. Jeff McCormack, who used to own SESE, about xpollination and the title is NCP, or natural cross pollination. I think some of Jeff's geographic isolation suggestions are far too conservative, but would be fine for a commercial enterprise, but it's the info about X pollination itself that is the worth of the article. Californian, yes, those who grow tomatoes in greenhouses do often hire hives for the season, and yes, there can be more fruits, but fruit size is not neccessarily linked to the number of seeds in a fruit. Look at all the heart and paste varieties with so few seeds as an example. So visits by bees, and they aren't there for the nectar b'c tomato blossoms don't have any, they're there for the pollen as a protein source, can help ensure that more blossoms set fruit. Self pollenization is usually about maybe 90%-95 % effective, but that depends on the variables that you can read about in that SESE article. Any ovules in the tomato ovary that aren't self pollenized can then be cross pollinated , again, depending on variables. I've listed maybe 4-500 different varieties in the SSE Yearbooks over time and grown about 2500 hundred varieties to date, and of the ones lsited in the Yearbook I know od less than maybe 15 that were cross pollinated. And I didn't even know about those until I'd distributed 100's of seeds for a single variety. And that's b'c it depends on how many fruits were processed for seed production. Never ever save seeds from jsut one fruit off one plant, save from several fruits off one plant, save several fruits from two plants, well, you get the picture. What one accomplished by doing that is to dilute out any cross pollinated seeds, so that's why a person may not ASAP know that saved seeds from a variety do have some X pollinated seeds. I do a free seed offer elsewhere each year, now closed, and alst year just one person got an off plant from one of the new varieties, and I'd distributed the same seeds to many who participated in that seed offer. So, use blossom bags if you feel you need pure seed for a variety ( not a strain), depending on what you plan to do with those seeds. For many folks both hobyy gardeners and commercial folks who do their own seed production, way too many plants are grown, in the hundreds and thousands and bagging blossoms is just not practical, or possible. Carolyn, not editing the above b'c some just stopped by to visit,

We can't use empty tissue containers around here. Those little 4" tubes wouldn't hold but a couple of bags, even folded neatly LOL. Some other places with might need bags. Our library takes them also. Our grocery stores have recycling bins at the front doors. Our local recycling center will take them. Our local animal shelter uses them for cleaning out their cat litter box and cleaning up after the dogs. You can check and see if charity gifts shops could use them. Some of ours will and some won't. They make really good packing material for cushioning breakable stuff. You could post them on Freecycle and suggest they would be good if someone is moving. Or close to the holidays when people ship items. My mom and I sent the same bags back and forth for several years in our shipping boxes. And when I'm tired of the kids, I give them each a bag and tell them to scour the neighborhood for trash. We weigh it on our postal scale and I pay them a dime an ounce. Gloria