Wendy, just wait 'till they're really long and fat and pregnant looking. Hold a bowl underneath to catch escapees. Stick the pod in the bowl, gently squeeze and see if it pops. If it does and the seeds are still white, they weren't ripe yet. If it pops and they're black, bingo!

Karen

Thanks Karen! (Your Ruds are the envy of the neighbourhood, btw..Everyone wants to replace their Black-eyes with mine!)
Will try tomorrow.

I'm glad you like them, Wendy.

We were on vacation last week in blessedly cool Michigan. Now my garden is going to seed and everything looks overgrown. My ruds have a bad case of powdery mildew. Maltese cross has burned up and looks like crap. Knautia is going to seed again. And it's too hot to accomplish anything fast in the heat. Everything bloomed weeks early this year from the heat.

Karen

Wendy, I just wanted to share my experience with Impatiens Balfourii with you......

I received some of these seeds in a round robin swap two years ago and about 5 plants germinated. I put them in a shady spot in the garden and marveled at them all season - where had they been all my life? Just beautiful and so different from the acres of bedding impatiens my neighbors put in evey year.

That August I went into my usual "Ok, how do I collect seed on all these plants, including IB, that were new to me this year?" and like you had a hard time getting seed from IB. Maybe got ten seeds, far fewer than I wanted.

So I started last summer with those seeds WS and they all germinated. I decided to put a bunch in a gorgeous new urn I'd gotten and they looked great (I think they are very elegant). Last August, I had a bit more success collecting seed and was excited that I would be able to fill in lots of shadey spots with this plant.

Long story short (er!) I ended up being able to give the WS seedlings away this year because IB had heavily self seeded (or carried by birds - must be cause there were some 20' from the urn)all over my shady patio area. It looks wonderful. I have been able to transplant some of these volunteers to other places. I feel like I won the lottery and everyone comments on this unusal plant. No one had ever seen it before here until I had a friend over who sometimes works for a local MAster Gardner on her extensive beds. She said- "oh, you better watch this one - it's very invasive"

So, for now, I am loving the volunteers.They have been blooming their heads off since June and never look ratty or tired. I bet you get some volunteers too and won't have to worry too much about seed collecting!

Nancy