Yeah, that is definitely one of the downsides - sometimes the whole fruit/vegetable has to be sacrificed to get the seeds. Peppers a notable exception, and paste tomatoes are much easier to get seed from and keep the rest of the flesh. Often, I'll make tomato, cheese, mayo sandwiches for all of us and whatever of the tomato is left I save the seeds from that as I don't care for cut tomatoes that've been left out. Tonight's beefsteak was May's Green Pineapple (DIVINE) and I'll get the leftover seeds from the leftover tomorrow. I did the same with my Black From Tula.
Also, to get good quality seeds things are often considerably past prime, eggplants and cukes in particular. So, either way you don't get to eat them!
I think you're all good to collect seeds from your BER affected tomato; it is caused by a calcium deficiency (often brought on by a dry spell where water is unable to deliver the calcium) so no worries about pathogens. The seed will not be compromised because of BER.
Actually, I'm quite good a simply excising all of the gel from a normal tomato for seed saving and preserving the flesh intact for consumption. And, as far as I can tell, there is sufficient sugars in the gel alone to enable normal fermentation. It's just you can't really get the full flavor of a tomato without tasting the gel as well. And, while I am well aware that tomato seeds pass undigested through the human body, any method of retrieving them THAT way would be too disgusting to even contemplate, and I would only do in truly desperate circumstances (for example, with a tomato the breeder was handing out samples of, but was not planning to ever share seeds of, like some of Tom Wagner's stuff.)
With cukes, there is actually a middle ground where the seeds are ready but you can still eat some of it. You just scoop out the jelly in the middle to get the seeds, and eat the fleshy part. It's not as moist as a full slice (and, for a few types you lose a little flavor that exists only in the jelly) But it's still perfectly good for things like cold soups, pickles, and sushi if you make that (you don't use the jelly part in a kappamaki anyway.)
Eggplants, I agree, those are a one or the other choice. Peas too (unless you want to eat them as soup peas.) And for things like lablabs, you REALLY have to make the choice early, since by the time the seeds are mature, they're not only no longer tasty, they're poisonous! (well, some kinds are).
And you are right, we DID have a long dry spell this year, so that would explain it.
Yikes!
But I've had that happen too with odd coloured tomatoes I'm growing for the first time!
Andean potato seed? As in, seed potato or seeds collected from an Andean potato plant? Just curious
Lablabs.....I need to try these again. I failed my first time, mostly through inexperience, and hung on to the feeling 'I do badly with those'. I sholud get on the horse again.
Actual potato seeds, from a type called Chuchipa Ismaynin. It's supposed to be small, long, bright magenta skinned and very bumpy. I got them from Trade Winds Fruit (I just checked there though, and they are now out of stock).
Not that I have a great track record with growing potatoes from actual seed. The last time I tried, with some kind I got from Sacred Succulents, I DID get a plant, which DID flower and make a fresh berry (which I later lost, as once dried it became exceedingly tiny and fell off my dresser onto my floor where I couldn't find it.) but produced no tubers. And the time BEFORE that, when I was using one of Tom Wagner's Andean species potato seed mixes, the only plant that went past the itty bitty stage was, as far as I can tell, not a potato at all, but some kind of other nightshade (looked sort of like American Nightshade, except the flowers were a little flatter and the berries ripened to bronze instead of black. I still have the seed and may someday re-plant some (to sort it out if nothing else, while in my drawer the packet leaked and the seed got mixed with some for some sort of wild husk tomato, and I can't tell one from the other by seed alone.)
The real problem you are going to have with lablabs is the same one I am having, most of them will not flower in our latitude and day lengths. Over here, you are generally limited to only a few that will work (Ruby Moon will, as will the white flowered bush version
@Zeedman grows.) That's WHY I'm doing these experiments, to see if I can find any others. But the number of kinds out there are bewildering (and that's not factoring in the fact that nearly all of the stuff I can get is from the Asian gene pool alone, there is an additional equally large gene pool in Africa, same as with cowpeas. (the kinds grown in the US are generally from the African pool, since they came along with the slaves. The Asian pool is where things like the yard long bean fit.)
