Apios Americana groundnut from seed

Hello all, I have two Apios Americana plants near each other that each set seed this year.  They are from Oikos and the only two that I think made it when I planted 4 or 6 tubers.  I tried some searching around and didn’t have any luck, so was hoping some kind knowledgeable person would know the best way for me to go about trying to plant the seeds. I am in zone 5b.  Some basic questions -

- Should I let the green beans dry on the plant before I harvest the seeds, or would the seeds be viable now?
- should I save the seed to plant in the Spring, or should I plant them now?

My basic strategy was going to be to try both and see what works, but there’s not a *ton* of seed, maybe a half dozen pods between the two plants, so I’d like to “make the most of it”.  Thanks!

I'd start by mimicking nature as much as possible, since groundnut hasn't been cultivated and refined to the point where it needs human intervention.

What that most likely means is, leave the pods on the plant until they dry down. If the weather is too rainy for them to dry, then at least watch for them to change color enough to make it clear the seed is ripe. Maybe even leave one pod on the plant until it drops the seed on it's own.

Since it's a perennial, it will probably be ok to plant it in the fall. That's when the seeds would drop on their own.

That’s a great common sense plan Elendra!

Just an update - one of the plants had dried up browned pods and the others were still green, so I picked both and collected the seeds.  I’m actually dubious that the dried up pod seeds will be viable, they were tiny and didn’t have any kind of bean shape.  The green pods had 3 seeds that were much larger than the others.  I planted all the seeds in fabric containers I buried in the ground, 4 in all, and labeled two of them “dried seed” and two “fresh seed”, pic is the seed I collected from both types of pod. Will update this thread with any success or failure next Spring!