Saving eggplant seeds

[Tracydr]

I threw some yellowish eggplants on the ground ( at least, I guess I did) last fall, and now I have a bunch of volunteers.
I'm beginning to think that eggplants are just about one of the easiest crops for me to grow in AZ. That and okra.

[sundrop]

Originally Posted by nctomatoman

I let them get good and yellow, fill a bowl with water, cut the fruit in half, submerge the fruit and work my fingers around the seed lines. The flesh and bad seeds seem to float to the surface - those that sink are put through a sieve, they are dried on plates....I think it depends upon the ripeness of the fruit, but I've approached 100% this way up to 3 years after saving.

I just saved my ping tung seeds with this method, thanks for sharing! It works like a charm.

[Cole_Robbie]

I had three Ping Tung Long that were my first attempts at saving eggplant seeds. I put one through my Cuisinart mini blender, and I was not able to pick very many seeds out of the mess. It looks like I chopped a lot of them into pieces.

Of the two I had left, I put one in the fridge and the other on a windowsill. The one in the fridge eventually went black with mold, so I threw it out. But the windowsill eggplant dried out without going bad. I haven't tried to cut it up yet, but it looks like it will last until spring. I can dig the seeds out then...or at least that is my plan.

[Greatgardens]

Just found this section -- I obviously had not looked too hard before! Craig's info on saving seeds is very helpful. I do find that I have better success with most hybrids. Best eggplant I've ever found is Burpee's Early Midnight. Early and productive, if not visually stunning as are some of the lavender and striped ones. Neon was great, but I always had germination issues with it.

And one "trick" -- eggplants love EarthBoxes. And having the boxes up off the ground (on a wooden stand) seems to also help limit the flea beetles. Later in the season when the light is starting to wane, they all seem to go downhill, but by then we're pretty tired of eggplant, anyway. Try it sliced and grilled, brushed with a little olive oil and garlic salt. I have a new air fryer, so I'll be interested to see how they are breaded and "fried" in it.

[Greatgardens]

Well, another year of failure trying to save seeds. I grew two plants that came from Neon seeds saved by another member here, so my plants were from F2 seeds. They were a bit different -- one fruit looked like original Neon and the other was a beautiful deep shade of purple (not "black"). Both had thin skins and white flesh, but the darker one was a smaller plant and had more of the classic "teardrop" shape. Both were very tasty, but I was really interested in the darker one.

I watched the YouTube videos, let the fruits get seriously over-ripe, and then processed the seeds by hand -- at least a hundred of each. I would say that the seeds were a little smaller than I'm used to, but were nice and plump. I ran a "paper towel" germination test -- zero germination from either batch after 14 days with bottom heat. Bummer! I'll try again before regular planting time, but I'm not optimistic for success.

Any thoughts? I don't understand why the F1 plant saved seeds were viable and then the F2 seeds failed to be viable if it is a genetic issue. OTOH, I don't know of anything that I did that would have caused the failure.

[PhilaGardener]

GG, save those seeds and try the germination test again in the spring - some varieties seem to have a germination inhibitor that prevents them from growing too soon. (This is true for TPS, where germination rates go up after a few years.)


Please let us know how that turns out!