Here you go I hope this helps you. Just keep in mind that if your plant is a hybrid then it will not be true to seed. You may get something entirely different or you may get something close to what you planted, that just depends on how many variations were used to create the existing plant. Oh and I found this link by searching lisianthus plant. Here is a link that might be useful: lisianthus

Anyway, my melons were not hand pollinated, but I did a pretty thorough check of my neighborhood, where barely anyone gardens, and certainly no one else is growing melons. Amy Goldman's book said 1/2 mile should be safe. So, I'm confident there wasn't cross pollination. Martha, To quote from Suzanne Ashworth's Seed Saving book; "Any two or more varieties within the same species must be prevented from crossing in order to save pure seed" Your Blacktail will be OK, but both Schoon's Hard Shell and Honey Rock are in the same species, C. melo, so they will cross. I think what Amy might have been referring to was a 1/2 mile isolation distance between varieties within the same species if hand poillination is not done, and Ashworth quotes the same distance. So if you are growing all three at your home then Blacktail is probably OK if no other watermelons, C. citrullus, are within about 1/2 mile. But the two others would have crossed unless they were separated by a 1/2 mile distance. As for seed maturity and viability , Ashworth says seeds are not mature until the melons are ripe to eat. Although I used to grow a lot of melons I never wanted to do the hand pollinations to get pure seed. For many years I also offered peppers at SSE but bagging blossoms was also not my thing and x pollination can be upwards of 70% without caging or bagging. So I stick with tomato offerings at SSE. Due to physical disabilities I'm down from 200-250 varieties/year to about a dozen, but self pollenization is the rule for tomatoes and it occurs about 95% of the time. Hand pollinating melons and squash and cukes was just too much work for me. Even Amy, who is a long time close friend and you'll see my name on her thanks page as she is on my thanks page for my heirloom tomato book, seldom hand pollinates her melons unless it's a very rare variety, and as you know, offers very few as listed at SSE. Actually she sent up a nice basket of melons just last week. Lovely. And as I eat them I'm not saving the seeds b/c I know darn well she probably didn't hand pollinate them. She's too busy finishing up her book on squash. Hope that helps. Carolyn

* Posted by: flowerbrackob z4 WI (My Page) on Wed, Sep 21, 05 at 13:11 I have a question about these loverlies.................also a comment................when the dry fuzzies appeared after each bloom was finished, I spread them around and I have hundreds of new baby plants. I was considering two things: gently removing the babies, transplanting them and finish growing them indoors OR: why not just dig up the whole ones plantedand bring them indoors for the winter cheer? Guess I could experiment; maybe ya'll have ideas or even done it already without starting from seeds in Feb/Mar. I may just have to save more fuzzies!!!!

The issue is are they hybrids or heirlooms/open pollinated varieties. If they are hybrids then the seeds you save won't breed true. Hybrid seeds in the packet are the result of manual cross-pollination of at least 2 parent varieties. The seeds saved from those hybrid plants once grown, will revert to the parent stock or some strange combination of them. If your seeds planted and grown are heirlooms or open-pollinated plants, not hybrids, then yes you can save the seeds and re-grow them. Depending on what the plant is - self-fertile like tomatoes or insect pollinated like most flowers, they may or may not grow true. In some cases, like hollyhocks you will still get lots cross-pollination by insects so your saved seeds may change color etc. It all depends on how much you care whether or not the seeds you saved breed true or not. Many don't care, many do. Some research on cross-pollination will explain this in more detail. ;) Dave