01/31/2026
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When you harvest your seeds this year make sure you are harvesting them from botanically ripe fruit.
Botanically ripe or over ripen is different than regular ripe and you don’t have to be a botanist to understand the difference. Botanically ripe is what some people would refer to as “rotten “ or “mankey “.
These are tomatoes that have developed soft spots and have become watery .
Actually the botanically ripe pepper will actually shed water when you cut into it and its skin has become wrinkly.
Apples will become “ mealy” and have soft spots .
It is no longer firm, but the flesh is failing because of cellular breakdown.
Often times It’s the kind of produce you would never buy for yourself to eat but this is exactly the type of produce you want to harvest your seeds from
Harvesting seeds from immature, fruit often leads to immature seeds or at best seeds that have not become “the best that they can be “ .
Seeds that are harvested from immature fruit often leads to genetically stressed under developing plants.  simply put these are seeds that were forced to go through the metamorphosis.( drying and rehydrating and sprouting ) before they were fully developed.
Plants have developed these coping mechanisms to still produce viable seed, but they aren’t the best seed.
Nature designed fruit so that the seed can still develop after the fruit has fallen from the tree . Even after fruit has been picked, and it is technically no longer growing, the seeds are still growing and developing inside. These seeds are still using moisture and nutrition from the fruit to finish their development.
 Ripe produce means that it is perfect for human consumption but overripe means it is perfect for saving seed.
I had to pick a bunch of green peppers from my polytunnel the other day. Having been away from it for more than five days because of the storm I had many over ripen peppers on plants .
When it comes to bell peppers, sometimes they will change colors, and sometimes they will not, but you can always tell from the flesh and the wrinkling of the skin.
I picked a bunch of bell peppers that were ripe and I picked a bunch that were over ripe, shown here , for the production of seed.
This paper is what’s known as a California wonder. It’s an heirloom bell pepper plant that is so vigorous and strong. Commercial growers use it and producers of hybrids use it as some of their genetic stock. I have also been known to use this pepper in the creation of successful hybrids.
These seeds will be dried and then replanted next month .
A fruit doesn’t necessarily have to still be attached to the parent plant to produce strong and vigorous seed. The perfect case of this is the tomato. The parent plant stops feeding the tomato when it’s in its “breaker” stage or when the green is turning to pink before the red.
Yeah, sorry shoppers but the myth of a vine ripen tomato is just that it’s a myth.
Since the tomato plant is no longer feeding the tomato it technically can’t contribute nutrition to the seed and yet the seed continues to fully develop inside that tomato.
This is pretty clear evidence that the seed is still surviving on the actual fruit and not the plant it came from.
I know there are people that will swear up and down that their tomatoes taste better when they fully lost all the green and developed all the red whilst still attached to the plant, but that isn’t the case.
Different types of environmental factors will play in on tomato taste, including the amount of sunlight that’s hitting the fruit. This of course could be duplicated by finishing the tomato ripening process on a windowsill.
At any rate when it comes to the harvest of pepper seeds, understand that you do not have to harvest seed from picture perfect fruit in order to have viable seed.
 In fact some of the best seed I’ve ever harvested from nightshade comes from fruit that is damaged by predators while still on the plant. The act of predation tells the plant that the fruit has been compromised, and it kicks nutrition into high gear.
