You're sure welcome, Cabrita. "The book you mention sounds like a good addition to my library. ... I think I need to learn a bit more about plant sex ;-)" Heh-heh! Seed to Seed explains a whole lot of "the birds and the bees" when it comes to vegetables. ;) It's an excellent book on isolation techniques for saving pure seed. It'll explain in great detail caging, bagging, hand pollinating and all sorts of other things involved in saving pure seed. The best part is it tells you which techniques to use on which plants. EXCELLENT resource for that imho. And it's less than 17 bucks on Amazon. I just put in an order for another one as a friend came over today and I gave her mine. *blush* But that gave me an excuse to buy Great Garden Companions by Sally Cunningham, a book on companion planting that I've been wanting for a while. Gotta' spend $25 to get that free shipping you know. *snicker* "I am confused about caging, how will the bees get in there? then you say hand pollinating. I don't know how to do that. I heard (read) this on the tomato forum too." The bees won't get in there. That's the entire purpose of caging. If you don't cage the ones you want to keep pure, a few bees will visit some Queen Anne's Lace nearby (really, I'd bet money you have it growing near you), pick up some QAL pollen on their legs/hair, land on your carrot blooms on the way back to the hive and deposit some of that QAL pollen on them. Now your carrots are cross pollinated with the QAL. Bummer. And you very well may not be able to tell ~ just avoiding saving seeds from white-rooted carrots won't be enough of a guarantee that they didn't cross since sometimes a cross will look just like one or the other parent, but won't taste or grow like them. Just like humans ~ some people look a whole helluva lot like Mom, but they're not her twin. To keep that from happening, you build cages with some sort of screening on them that will allow air, sun and rain through but not bees. Window screen works nicely on a wood frame, as does light floating row cover on hoops tall enough to keep the cover off the carrot blooms. You cover your carrots with them, a bunch of plants at a time. Here are some pictures of what I'm talking about: Pic 1 Pic 2 ~ second picture on that page And here's a thread with a good picture and lots of info on how to build them. Since there are no bees, you'll have to take their place and hand pollinate. It's as simple as moving pollen from one flower onto another. (Be sure to only do this between plants that are showing the trait you want ~ heat tolerance in this case.) This can be done with a small paintbrush ~ just touch the pollen parts, loading it up with pollen, then touch a bunch of blooms and the pollen will get desposited. Do this all over all the blooms and you're done. Another way is to pick one bloom and use it as the paintbrush, brushing the other blooms with it ~ pick a few different blooms and brush each one on all the other blooms to ensure a good genetic mixup. But if you pick those blooms, that'd be that much less seed you'll get since of course the blooms you've picked and used as your paintbrushes won't go on to set seed. Don't think that you can just avoid that by picking the blooms of the plants that aren't showing heat tolerance and use those ~ you need to use blooms from plants showing the trait you want since their genetic traits are going to be crossed into the other blooms and their resulting seed ~ the blooms you pick are going to be Daddy to your next generation of seed. But in the coming generations when you have hundreds of plants growing out, you may find it so much easier to do it that way that it's well worth sacrificing those blooms. The Seed to Seed book will explain all this in better detail and more accurately than I can. It's really a great book. I highly recommend it to anyone and everyone who wants to save true vegetable seed. I've given away two of them so far and doubt that my third one will stay with me for very long before it gets passed on as well. ;) It's really that good of a book. There's also a book on breeding new vegetable varieties that was recommended to me, but I haven't bought it yet (one of these days...). I can't remember exactly what it's called ~ something like "Breeding Your Own Vegetable Varieties" or something.

I don't know what the plant is either so can't be too helpful. Most of those don't look completely dry to me though. Has the plant naturally dropped any seeds or opened to release them? That's a sure sign that they're ready to harvest. Also on many plants the stem right below the pod will turn brown too. One pod, the tight capsule-looking thing on the right of the pic, looks like it might be ready. I'd pick that one and open it to see if the seeds look mature. Most seeds when ripe will be hard and black or dark brown. If the one you pick isn't done, give them a couple of days and check another. Also watch for the plant to release them. Karen

I have been doing prairie plating for over 30 years and experiment with many so called difficult native seed. This is what I know about all the gentians in zone five area. Collect bottle gentian pods just after they have faded and have turned brown but before the pod opens all the way. The pod is ripe when the top opens slightly. Gentian seed should never dry out. This is the key to all the gentians. I put them in a plastic ziplock bag so they stay moist. I take them home open the pods and then add moist ( not wet) sand to the seed and put them in the fridge until its time to sow. You will find a lot of the pods of seed contain small worms that eat the seed just discard them as you open the pods. The seed can be kept in the fridge but after about three months they can start to germinate in the bag so I usually sow them before the snow flys. I have grown the stratified gentian after two months in the fridge but they are very slow growing and it is just easier to sow where you want them. I have grown thousands on restorations this way. This also works for all the gentians. Never let the seed dry out. Good luck.

Store dried seeds in a cool dark area in a plastic bag until ready to plant. Keep seeds dry at preferably at or below 40 degrees but not freezing, freezing can damage them.