I picked shucked and have them drying, so I'm bumping.

Moni, I'm sure George and Dawn will be along and share their opinions. Maturity is the most important thing I 've found in my experience. My experience is more with peppers, tomatoes and pinto beans. This is my first year saving pole beans ect. Although I can't foresee a lot of if any difference. If a seed is mature and gets frosted it will probably be ok from my experience. I know the seeds I saved from the one variety of George's this fall I left on the vine and a few weeks after the first hard freeze and they had dried out well I shelled them. You can tell the small and immature seeds and I usually cull them. What I've always been told on tomato seeds is if they have a blush you are probably ok. And there is a discussion going on right now on another site about that. In my opinion save the seeds and then do a germiation check. If none germinate throw them away. If they do you can determine if the rate is high enough to be worthwhile. I'm starting a test on some tomato seeds I saved today. That just lets me know if I have a problem before I either share them or sow them in the late winter. The one example I can give why it doesn't hurt to save and test them is an experience I had 5 years ago. Had a terrible hail and heavy rain the last of June and wiped out 35 tomato plants. Only 4-5 even suckered out. Well I went and got a few late ones I could find and planted them around July 10th. Had to take what the greenhgouses had which included mid and late season types. Had a fairly early fall and only got tomatoes for 7-10 days off a few early types. One mid season type plant was loaded and the tomatoes were still green as a gourd. I just tilled in what fell off the vine when I pulled it as it had no disease issues with that plant and I was sure the seeds weren't mature. Around June 1st the next year several volunteers came up where that vine was. I grew out a few and they grew true to what they should of been. I would of bet good money that they would never of germinated. So if you have time to do a germination test it doesn't hurt or cost much to save and check them in my opinion. Jay

Thanks for the follow-up, Remy! I cut them off last night. Lucky I did, because it's supposed to get down to 22 here tonight! Anyway, the seeds were (for the most part) all mature, and looked fine. The seeds in a couple of the smaller pods were still white. I'm going to try germinating a few when they finish drying. Thanks again! --Jordan

jdevers, Oh, your weather is just like mine! Our average last frost date is March 28th, but in about 7 out of 10 years at my house we'll have about one freezing night per week until around May 3rd or 4th. It makes me crazy, but I just try to plant when soil and air temps are in the right range, and then use floating row cover to protect plants on the occasional late cold night. That is funny about having to worry about plants bolting and/or freezing at the same time and my experience here this spring has been very similar. The weather in this part of the country sure can change rapidly. I like Seedmama's 2-liter bottle cloches. To store similar things, I cannot put them in trash bags or my husband thinks they are trash and hauls them off to the dump, so I store them in nicely labeled kitty litter buckets. I use duct tape to label the buckets. Of course, if you go into the greenhouse or garage, it looks like we are hoarding cat litter, but I like reusing buckets for storing many items. A cat litter bucket here gets used over and over for a million and one things until it finally cracks or breaks and then it finally goes into the trash. I bet I have some buckets that are 10 years old. I don't worry too much about okra getting an early start most years. It grows so fast once the soil temperatures are just right for it that I tend to just wait and plant it at the normal time. Or, even worse, I see volunteers sprouting on their own and that makes me realize it is time to get the seed in the ground if I want to grow the specific variety I intended to grow. Or, I can just dig up seedlings (they tend to sprout near the compost pile where I know I have thrown overmature pods in the past) and transplant them where I want to grow them if I don't care what variety it is. Nothing says "it is time to plant your seeds now" more than seeing volunteers that already have sprouted. Due to us having a lot of hot days this past winter---not in a row, usually, but just 1 or 2 here or there, we had a lot of strange seedlings popping up randomly, including summer squash, gourds and okra in February and March. Of course, they froze later on. Dawn