At what stage of fruit maturity are seeds viable ?

Wi-sunflower · October 19, 2009

I've seen all kinds of comments about other factors of the fruit when picking for seed saving but I haven't seen anything about how mature the fruit should be before the seed will be viable.

I ask because some of my varieties this year didn't produce much if any "ripe" fruit due to our cold "summer". We are going thru the patch picking a bucket of fruit of the varieties I need seeds for. I've told my crew that I only want "ripe" tomatoes, but they have picked a lot of greenies for a few varieties since there were so few ripe ones.

Is it going to be worth my time to process those greenies for seeds ??

Last nite I did do 1 variety that was more green than ripe and I was surprised that more of the seed didn't float as immature/bad seeds usually do. I wonder if I will get decent germination on them.

Carol

October 19, 2009	#1
Wi-sunflower Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: Wisconsin Posts: 2,591	At what stage of fruit maturity are seeds viable ? I've seen all kinds of comments about other factors of the fruit when picking for seed saving but I haven't seen anything about how mature the fruit should be before the seed will be viable. I ask because some of my varieties this year didn't produce much if any "ripe" fruit due to our cold "summer". We are going thru the patch picking a bucket of fruit of the varieties I need seeds for. I've told my crew that I only want "ripe" tomatoes, but they have picked a lot of greenies for a few varieties since there were so few ripe ones. Is it going to be worth my time to process those greenies for seeds ?? Last nite I did do 1 variety that was more green than ripe and I was surprised that more of the seed didn't float as immature/bad seeds usually do. I wonder if I will get decent germination on them. Carol