Planting from vegies

I should know this but I am not sure so I thought I would ask my more knowledgeable friends here.
My daughter was wondering if she could take and dry the seeds from her store bought Red, orange and yellow bell peppers and then plant them, would they grow and produce more peppers? Would appreciate any advice you can give on this.

If they are red , orange, or yellow they will be ripe peppers and the seeds will viable.

Thank you

>> would they grow and produce more peppers?

I agree with Farmerdill: the seeds will be ripe and likely to sprout and peppers will grow from them.

However, commercial growers often or usually grow their crops from "hybrid" seeds for several reasons.

One problem for us seed-savers is that when a hybrid crops flowers and the plants pollinate each other, they are hybrid plants producing hybrid pollen and hybrid ovules (the female part that becomes a seed, like the "egg" in human ovaries).

Unfortunately, when you cross a hybrid plant with itself, the result is not often very much like the plant. You get "recombination" of the traits that were bred into the hybrid's PARENTAL lines. You don't even wind up with half like one parent and half like the other. You get a mish-mash of every trait in random combinations.

It's a gamble whether or not ANY of the 10-20 plants you might plant from a supermarket pepper will be desirable to grow in your climate or make nice, big sweet peppers.

If you bought peppers from a fruit stand, you could ask them whether they grew from hybrid seeds or "OP" seeds. If the answer is "OP", ask what variety! (If they don't know that answer, they might have been fibbing about OP vs hybrid, or just not knowing).

If they grew their peppers from OP seeds, then their plants "came true" and produced seeds that are "true" to the original strain. You can plant those saved OP seeds and know that their genetics will be the same as the genetics of the plants the fruit stand people grew.

If they grew 'Lady Bell' plants and sold 'Lady Bell' peppers with 'Lady Bell' seeds, you will grow 'Lady Bell' plants from the 'Lady Bell' seeds you saved.

Of course, if their weather and season-length and soil and farming practices are totally different from yours, your crop might be smaller or barely reach ripeness before frosts come.

You'll put so much time and effort into growing ripe peppers that investing in a packet of store-bought seeds may be a wise investment.

Or, if you have a lot of some other seeds, even flower seeds, you may find people who will trade with you. Sadly, postage for a bubble mailer costs $2.32 and that's around the price of a small packet of seeds. If you trade seeds in a flat first-class envelope, high-speed postal sortation machines often crush the seeds.

BTW, Italians really know sweet peppers and have quite a variety!
http://www.growitalian.com/categories/Vegetables/Peppers/




This message was edited Jun 24, 2014 3:40 PM

i do agree with all the RickCorey said above about the hybrids. also another possibility is that if it is a hybrid, that the seeds would completely sterile all together (even if the fruit was allowed to completely over ripen, the seed wouldnt be viable). sort of a human implemented trait to protect the patent that the hybridizer has on that specific variety if i recall correctly.

if your peppers were bought from a supermarket such as walmart etc. then the chances of true from seed variety, or even germination itself would be a gamble, but now if it came from a farmers market, or small independently owned fruit stand, then you have a really good shot at it.

I know that was not the question, but hybrid seeds are as viable as any other seeds, they are just not specifically pure. Many of the new hybrids are from inbred lines and don't show the seperation of older hybrids. Many of the OP sellers today are very careless about maintaining purity so you can also get variation in OP seeds. Yes if you want a specific variety, buy seeds from a reputable vendor. If you just want to grow generic bell peppers and are not concerned about specifics saved hybrid seed will work. Lots of folks do it. Some even do it carefully to develop an OP variety. Seeds are the least expensive component in growing.

I defer to Farmerdill's greater experience.

Thank you all for your advice. I will pass it all along to my daughter. I suggested she join Dave's and she can find out first hand.
thanks again.

Just to add more confusion. Lol There are many sweet peppers that are not bells that out produce and taste better (IMHO) then most bells. Soooo many choices.