Does a tomato need to be 'quite' ripe, and even ripened on the vine for the best assurance of good seed viability? Is there a good chance there would be fewer viable seeds in those store bought maters that are grown out of our season, grown far away, and picked early?

****

Sue, saving seed starts with knowing how to prevent cross pollination and there's an excellent article about this if you click on the FAQ link at the top of the page.

Fruits that have a distinct blush at the bottom of the fruit have mature seeds. I usually let them ripen up more than that, though, either on the vine or off the vine on a table away from the sun.

And no, there should be the normal amount of seeds in store bought tomatoes, whether it's Ugly Ripe or whatever.

Not all of thenm are picked grass green and gassed with ethylene oxide to hasten ripening. And since fruits normally produce the same gas as part of the ripening process gassing then in an enclosed area just hastens the ripening.

But artifically gassed ones will never taste the same as normally ripened ones IMO/ Which is why I gave up picking greenies at the end of the season and doing the newspaper wrapping thingie. And I won't put fruits in a paper bag either to ripen them.

BTW, I'm glad you added my BLAH to your insipid comment above as I noted in that other thread. ( smile)

Carolyn

Sue, saving seed starts with knowing how to prevent cross pollination and there's an excellent article about this if you click on the FAQ link at the top of the page.
Thanks but I am familiar with those, bought the material years ago to make my own baggies, (wonder where that's at), and have pondered the future placement of numerous varieties being segregated around the property. Having 40 acres, I can maintain a really good distance between quite a few varieties.

Fruits that have a distinct blush at the bottom of the fruit have mature seeds.
As in fruit goes from being green green, to light green, to whitish, to a blush of whatever color it will end up being?...so they are really far from being what one would call ripe?

But artificially gassed ones will never taste the same as normally ripened ones IMO
I so agree. I only bought the Uglyripe in the dead of winter, at a high price I'm sure, because I wanted to save the seeds. I felt pretty certain that they were grown in a large enough mass, that there was little chance of them being cross pollinated. I was just really curious why they weren't viable for the member I shared with. Possibly it was even their seed starting procedure or something though, and not bad seeds. I guess I could test a few myself yet.

I'm glad you added my BLAH to your insipid comment above as I noted in that other thread.
Per Merriam-Webster on line dictionary...1 : lacking taste or savor : tasteless
I think Uglyripe in the middle of winter might better be described as nasty, along with most all other big winter store bought varieties.

Sue

Fruits that have a distinct blush at the bottom of the fruit have mature seeds.
As in fruit goes from being green green, to light green, to whitish, to a blush of whatever color it will end up being?...so they are really far from being what one would call ripe?

*****

Correct, far from being fully ripe. All you need is a blush of color as in breaker stage 2 as it's called. But it's a heck of a lot easier to let them ripen up more than that so that there's plenty of juice in the interior when you go to process them.

Sorry about referring you to the FAQ but it's hard for me to remember everyone and their backgrounds and you haven't been posting much lately. ( smile)

Carolyn

Thanks. I won't concern myself with them being ripe enough and will maybe go ahead and harvest some I've been watching and not take a chance on insects or critters getting to them before I do.

....and you are right. I haven't been around much for a while. Though I am still a tomatoholic, I have developed a few other addictions in the past 2 years...so I am more of a 'regular' at other forums than I have been here lately. I'm keeping my distance from those daylily fanatics, and those hostaholics. I'm aware there are a lot of enablers out there, and I really don't want or need yet another addiction.

Sue

those rose folks are TERRIBLE enablers!

Sue,

I've saved seeds from tomatoes picked a first blush and ripened on the counter, and got just as good germination as seeds from fully vine ripened tomatoes.

I've gotten poor germination from seeds taken from fully vine ripened tomatoes, too. And I've gotten good germination from commercial tomatoes that I assume were picked as "green ripe" (pre-breaker) and gassed.

Also, I've gotten reports of zero germination back from folks to whom I sent seeds after test germinating the same batch and getting 95% or better germination. This year I had someone report poor germination rate from seeds (Spudakee) that I got 47 out of 52 germination. And I got a report back on poor germination, poor seedling vigor, and early transplant death on seeds (Indian Stripe) that I got great germination, great vigor and subsequently the plants are still pumping out ripe tomatoes yet today.

There are way too many factors that influence germination rates on the exact same seed batch, IMO. I've gotten to the point that I totally ignore other folks reports of poor germination and only rely on personal experience.

Bill

I'm so glad I found this post. Due to circumstances beyond my control, I didn't get my tomatoes planted until late June. Now it's 23 Sept and only one of the heirloom varieties has ripened tomatoes on the vines. I'm so happy to know that the seed should be mature if there is that blush on the bottom! I will hate not having ripened fruit for eating/canning but to lose the seed saving opportunity is an even bigger issue.

Posting so this will be bumped for someone in the same predicament!

I went out yesterday and picked all the perfect large tomatoes and placed them on shelves in the basement to ripen. I also snipped off any new flowers and suckers from the plants in hopes the remaining, still growing tomatoes have a chance to get larger and either begin to ripen or can be picked and ripened in the house...I need to get them out of the garden in the next couple weeks since I am having surgery in Oct and need to get the garden cleaned up before then. Hopefully the plants will put all their energy into growing the tomatoes I left on the plants. Kim