Hi Cabrita,
Your way does work. Most people used to do it the way you do.
Fermentation lowers the amount of disease pathogens that sometimes hitch a ride with the seed, and the germination inhibitor in the gel around the seed gets removed.
Remy

Thanks for the reply Remy. I found this nice instruction set:

http://faq.gardenweb.com/faq/lists/seedsave/2002084456024410.html

and since I will prepare some for trading I will follow it.

Hey Cabrita,

This is a great question. Thankfully, removing the pulp around the seeds is not very hard. There is a blog site that I have, and all this month and the next month, I will be talking about saving and collecting seeds. Next Sundays blog will be on storing tomato seeds. In that blog I will be talking about how to collect, clean(get off the pulp,) and dry them!

This is nice because, like you, I like to trade my seeds, and everyone likes seeds that are like the stores!

~Zach

my blog url is:
www.vioboy.blogspot.com

Here is a link that might be useful: my blog

Thank you Zach, I'll read your blog when you get to the tomatoes. After reading some of the information on tomato seed preservation I gather that fermentation is also a good idea in order to remove any potential pathogens from the gel around the seeds. I would not worry about this when sprouting my own seeds, but since I want to trade i'll follow the instructions on the faq on seed saving. Makes for some 'safe' seed trading this way I guess.