Easter Eggplant--Collecting Seeds

The Easter Eggplant (featured in earlier posts) is maturing beautifully, with "eggs" turning yellow and then a burnished orange that's the perfect color for September.  I can't recommend these plants highly enough, but do recommend putting them in pots where you can more easily enjoy the eggs.  The flowers are also quite pretty, but small and easier to see if they're somewhere closer to eye level.

With the fully mature orange color, it's time to collect seeds!  Although there are plenty of methods that work well for all eggplant, including the blender method, I chose the glass of water method.

Pick an eggplant (be careful, they have small thorns on the stem).  Fill a glass half full of water.

Cut the top stem portion off the eggplant.  You can cut as deeply as about a quarter way through the eggplant without losing too many seeds.

Then quarter the eggplant.  You can pull apart the seed containing areas by peeling back the yellow-white "meat" and exposing the seeds in layers.  Your thumbnail will be sufficient to free the seeds.  Dip your fingers containing the seeds into the water.

Repeat until you have all the seeds you want (it's best to take seeds from several plants to preserve as much genetic diversity as possible).  You may notice a few seeds float to the top, and all the excess eggplant meat and rind will also float.

Carefully pour off the water down to the seed layer but don't lose the seeds!  Then refill with water again and repeat pouring off.  Do this a third time and the water should be completely clear.

Dump the seeds onto a plastic or china plate (seeds will adhere to paper) and spread them out as well as you can. 

They'll tend to stick to each other, so do your best.  Let dry for a day or so, and spread them again.  Then dry for a week in a location out of direct sunlight and store for the winter.

Eggplant seeds tend to do best if they experience vernalization, or the process of simulating winter and then raising temperatures for spring.  I may do an extended entry on this in the future as I now have two species that benefit from vernalization (the other is cleome).