I am preparing some cucumber seeds for the GTS seed store. Problem is, I’ve never used the “fermentation “ process before. I usually just let all the seeds dry and sort out those that are fat.
So I’m doing the fermentation thing, and first day a bunch of seeds sank. Yay! Then I woke up this morning and most of them were floating, but when I stirred the jars they sank again. Is this normal?
Most of the seeds look viable. The fruits were bright yellow/orange and softening and I know they were ripe. I’m pretty sure there were more than a dozen viable seeds in three cucumbers, which is what was on the bottom of the jar this morning. And several of those looked pretty anemic for supposedly viable seeds.
Did I do something wrong? Should I keep these seeds for myself and hope the other seed cucumbers work out better?
It’s something normal and usual to me. I’m fermenting all cucurbits seeds this way during 24-72hours (depending on on temperatures: the cooler the longer) and those which are well filled sink, others float.
I fermented too long (10 days, busy mom problems) will that screw up these cucumber seeds? Maybe I’ll keep the too long fermented ones for myself and ferment another batch for max 72 hours. I have plenty more orange cucumbers ready to get seeds from.
When I’m furermit seeds I usually let a little long girl on top of it the jar on top of the water and then that’s when I clean them up because if you go by days depending on the temperature of your house or wherever you’re keeping them it can greatly change