I've seen a few people mention that they save seeds from the first fruits to ripen on their plants. Is that preferred? Are those seeds more viable? Do they produce stronger plants? Or does it just guarantee you won't forget to save some later :)

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Assuming you aren't bagging blossoms or isolating varieties by geographic isolation, when you save seeds is really dependent on what kind of insect polinators you have, how many, what the weather is and when they are most active.

Where I live they are most active in the Spring so I never save seeds from first fruits; I save all my seed from much later fruits.

But if your insect pollinators are most active in the late summer then saving seeds from several of the first fruits off one or more plants of the same variety might be best for you.

The only way to know what is best at first, is to save seeds from first and last fruits for each variety and see what your cross pollination percentage is.

Carolyn

If you are only growing one variety - save any of them you want. It makes no difference in viability, plant strength, etc.

But as Carolyn says, the issue is cross pollination. If you are growing several different varieties or have different varieties blooming at the same time or if you have nearby neighbor gardens and lots of insect activity, then either bag the blooms or wait till nearer to end of season when the odds of CP have decreased.

Many grow early season, mid-season, and late season varieties to reduce the odds of crossing somewhat.

Dave

As to "seed viability" rather than "seed purity" (which has been addressed by the first two members to answer), I think seeds from any well developed, vine ripened fruit in good, solid shape will yield viable seed with regard to germinating strongly if fermented, cleaned, dried and stored properly.

While seed from green, green ripe, breaker and over-ripe fruit also may prove viable, I prefer to harvest seed from fruit at the same stage of ripeness as that which is good to eat and in good shape to eat.

As far as "first fruit" vs "late fruit" or fruit set at any other point in the growing season, it seems that unless the tomato is one of those "seedless" tomatoes like Siletz, where self-pollination isn't necessary to set fruit, then just about any well formed tomato with its locules filled out with seeds and gel can be expected to yield viable seeds.

Personaly, I have always found that the very best tomatoes for seed purposes- comes from the fifth truss and above, as they are usually bigger and contain lots more seeds than those from the first trusses- this applies only of course to tall indeterminate plants rather than bush or determinate types, as it is much harder on those types to deteminate what truss is what- but usually the ones nearer the top of the plant are the more recently formed.

Tomatoes from the fifth truss and above always seem to contain many more seeds, as the plants get into their stride and gather strength and stem thickness and also seem to ripen better as the season wears on.

First truss tomatoes often contain very little seed by comparison -this is probably due to the fact that the plant is putting most of it's energy into growing at this stage, first truss tomatoes often lack flavour also-compared with later in the season, but the last paragraph statement is not always the case as there are a lot of variables in some varieties- but generally the fifth truss has everything built into the tomato that it should have by this stage.