[quote="pod"]I have finally found a tomato that seems to like our heat and delivers tasty tomatoes in large volume. Five plants have already generated over 100 tomatoes and are still loaded with green ones. They appear to still be setting tomatoes in the heat.
It is either a good year for tomatoes or I have hit the east Texas tomato lottery.
I want to save seed and trial it for another year before I become ecstatic.
I understand how to ferment and dry the seeds.
My question is does the tomato have to ripen on the vine before the seeds are harvested?
Pod, no it doesn't have to ripen on the vine. The more mature the seeds are in a tomato the higher the germination rate of the overall seed count. When you ferment the seeds from the tomato, the viable seeds will settle to the bottom and the nonviable seeds will be removed with the scum on top. I have saved seeds from green tomatoes and ended up with about 50% of the seeds being viable. An f2 volunteer from Sungold had 2 clusters of mature tomatoes but none had started ripening and a killing frost was forecast, so I cut the section of stem with the 2 clusters and placed it in a jar of water in my kitchen window. After about 2 weeks in the window most of the tomatoes were showing good color and I saved the seed from them. The only thing I would do different from normal is to stir the fermenting seeds more often as they are held more securely to the seed locules. Claud
Also, if you don't have enough tomato juice from the tomatoes you may need to add some strained juice from another tomato.
