Processing Pepper Seeds

[Cole_Robbie]

I used to think that saving pepper seeds was a no-brainer. Dump some seeds in a bowl when eating the pepper and put it in the cabinet to dry. It works, but not as well as I would like. Some varieties of my saved pepper seeds are not germinating like they should. And in trading seeds from people on other sites, my germination with other people's seeds is hit and miss as well. I usually get nearly 100% with tomatoes, so I don't think it is method or environment..

I just read this article about the sink & float method:
http://www.motherearthnews.com/organ...ppers-zbcz1409

Maybe I will try that this summer. Some of my seeds are whiter than others. I also wonder if that makes a difference. And how ripe should the pepper be? Is it better to wait until it starts to mold or go bad?

If anyone has any processing tricks to make sure I am saving only the best seeds, I would love to hear them.

[Locomatto]

I'm not speaking from personal experience, but I believe that with peppers it is important to leave the fruit on the plant for as long as possible before picking it if you intend to save the seed, as the seed matures later than it does in tomatoes.

[bjbebs]

I agree with Loco. My best results come from fruit that has started to wrinkle on the plant. The problem with doing this during the growing season is you want to pick as they ripen to encourage more bloom. What I do is pull the plant near the tail end of the growing season. Air dry outside for one day and then clean up the root ball. These plants are strung on string and dried in a cool room in the basement. Any seed that has any brown or off colored spots is thrown away. I consider 70%-80% germination rate good enough for me when working with fresh seed.

[rhines81]

I'm having a bad year with pepper germination too ... all packaged seed. 48.5% on average. 3 out of the 22 varieties (TAM Jalapeno, Anaheim and Cayenne) have been 20% or less.
It's worse with bad pepper seed, because you may allow 3-4 weeks to sprout, then re-sowing becomes at risk of being too late ... I always sow double, which didn't help this year with the TAMs. I wanted 12 plants, I have sowed 33 seeds and only 7 sprouted - out of those 7 only 3 made it past first leaves ... something is wrong with the TAMs this year, not having this issue with any other pepper variety. I've even tried different seed packets. The Anaheim and Cayenne, just did not want to sprout either, but I just re-sowed more seed from different packets last week so we will see. All of the other pepper varieties are prolific and I have plenty of spares.
Tomato seed, on average this year is 90.5% - 2 varieties out of the 19 brought the numbers down slightly.

Biker Billy Jalapenos were 93% success, so I have extras of those to substitute for the TAMs, but that's not the way I wanted it - this was going to be my last year for the Biker Billy, now I need to at least look at 2 more types of Jalapenos (at least) - definitely dropping the TAMs next year. Mucho Nacho, maybe?

[dmforcier]

No, unripe pods will have ripe seeds in them. Just fewer than ripe pods. Look at green jalapeños from the store. Lots of mature and viable seeds. However, different varieties have different treasures inside, and some are really miserly with the seeds. Some, notably C.pubescens, hate me and I won't try to give advice for them. But by and large I do what you do - seed a pod, dry the seeds, put in a bag and label the treasure.

Your instincts are good with the white seeds. (Except for C.pubescens which has black seeds.) Look for larger, off-white, plump seeds. If you're seeing off-color seeds then suspect that fungus has gotten in among them. This doesn't mean that the seeds won't germinate, but best to use the healthiest ones you have. Molding pods are still usable to some degree, but undesirable.

CR, are you dealing with large quantities?

[Cole_Robbie]

rhines, what led you to want to drop Biker Billy? This is my first year trying it. Two years ago, I had Mammoth, and I liked it a lot. I saved a big bowl of seeds and could not get a single one to sprout. By the end, I dumped everything in a pot and nothing came up out of hundreds of seeds. I have no idea why. That's only happened once.

Much Nacho is a great variety, if you are inclined to buy seeds, which I try to avoid.

As far as quantity, I don't think I have more than a 1/4 oz of anything. I usually have access to a lot of peppers in the summer, if I needed to go through a lot of seed to pick out the best.

I process my tomato seeds with Oxy Clean. I never tried it on pepper seeds, but if there is a problem that peroxide will kill, like fungus or mold, then maybe it is a good idea.

[Father'sDaughter]

I started using the sink/float method a couple of years ago after someone on here posted about it. It substantially increased my germination rates, so I'd say there is some truth in the method!

[BigVanVader]

Originally Posted by Father'sDaughter

I started using the sink/float method a couple of years ago after someone on here posted about it. It substantially increased my germination rates, so I'd say there is some truth in the method!

ditto

Oh and I put em in a mason jar and shake the crap out of it then slowly pour off floaters. If it is kinda floating but then sinks about halfway just dump it. This way you can get nearly 100% germination. I don't save pepper seeds much anymore because in my exp they often crossed and my jalapenos would be as hot as a habanero.

[pmcgrady]

I've had some pepper duds this year... Couldn't get any Carolina Reapers or Ancho San Luis to sprout from my own saved seed. Mushroom Pepper and Peter Pepper that I received in trades were duds also. I have a couple hundred peppers (around 30 varieties) that did sprout and are growing nicely. Too late to try to get any super hots started.

[Cole_Robbie]

Originally Posted by pmcgrady

Too late to try to get any super hots started.

What? We have plenty of time. I am just now about to start another round of seeds. My superhots are sprouting just about as fast as my sweet peppers.

[rhines81]

Originally Posted by Cole_Robbie

What? We have plenty of time. I am just now about to start another round of seeds. My superhots are sprouting just about as fast as my sweet peppers.

I agree, there is probably another week left to germinate pepper seeds if you have a 100 day growing season, another 2-3 weeks to get tomatoes started. I notice little difference (in GOOD seed) between hot or sweet peppers, on average it seems to be about 11 days. I've had hots come up in 7 days and sweets come up in 23 days (and the other way around too).

[pmcgrady]

Originally Posted by Cole_Robbie

What? We have plenty of time. I am just now about to start another round of seeds. My superhots are sprouting just about as fast as my sweet peppers.

Reapers took almost a month to germinate last year... I will try another batch of them. None of the Jimmy Nardello I planted came up either. I did have near 100% germination on Corbaci and Manganji seeds I bought from Baker Creek.

[dmforcier]

Originally Posted by pmcgrady

Reapers took almost a month to germinate last year...

2015, last year I grew the Reaper, 7 of 8 seeds germinated over 3-10 days. All 7 broke ground.

I've learned that it is not the variety that dictates the length of pre-germination 'cooking', but the condition of the seed, and the conditions under which you're trying to get them to grow. In this case, the seeds were from nice pods sent in the mail from a friend's 2014 crop. Seeded, dried, bagged. Nothing special.

[Zeedman]

Granted, I am far from a pepper guru... but my 2 c's.

I try to allow peppers grown for seed to mature fully on the plant. When this is not possible (due to frost), I pull the plant, pluck off all peppers except those beginning to change color, and hang the plant. Hopefully the peppers will draw some nutrients from the vegetation as it dries down. In my observations, such seed will have a lower storage life than seed which ripened normally, so I make a point of regrowing it within a year or two.

Even when peppers are fully ripe, I try to allow them to ripen further indoors before opening. With larger peppers (where I am saving the flesh for food use) I carefully cut a circle around the top, then slice downward from there along the ribs, and pull those sections off from the top down. Call me goofy... but I call this process 'squiding', since the placenta generally remains fairly intact, and somewhat resembles a squid with tentacles. At that point, if there are signs of mold in some of the peppers (some varieties seem more prone to this than others) then I remove & wash the seed immediately. If the variety shows no sign of mold, I may allow the seed to dry on the placenta... other pepper growers have claimed that this improved seed vigor. I prefer, though, to wash the seed before drying.

For thin-walled peppers (especially hot peppers) I usually dry the pods, then carefully crush them & separate the seeds. For smaller pods, I may even store the pods entire as seed, and just crush pods as needed when I need seed.

I have some reservations about the sink method. It seems to work - if you have plenty of seed, and are willing to accept that some (or much) of the seed discarded may be viable. I've often seen stubborn air bubbles clinging to the seed surface, which will cause false rejection of otherwise good seed. Stirring briskly with a wire whisk will break some of those bubbles loose, and increase the percentage of seed saved.

There is also the issue of hot pepper seed. Am I the only one to have noticed what happens when you add water to hot pepper seed??? The first time I did that, it drove me from the room coughing my lungs out. Chemical warfare comes to mind. Best done outside, or under an exhaust fan.

For very small hot peppers, I have run them in quantity (at the lowest speed) through a thrift-store blender that I modified for seed processing, by grinding the blades dull. I would not do this with peppers which have larger seeds. (This same blender works well for any wet-processed seed, such as eggplant & ground cherries.)

For the most part, after doing as much as possible to increase seed vitality, I save seed without using the sink method. After drying, I carefully remove any obviously immature or damaged seed before storage... and when planting, I pre-sort much as Dmforcier does.

[Gerardo]

Tradewinds germ rates were very high, so there's definitely a method. Their seed is wrinkly and uniform in shape and color.