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.

Dale, I'm so sorry I didn't see your post until now. Yikes! Time flies. Okay, here's the scoop. "Squash" and "pumpkin" are nebulous terms, often referring to the same thing. So, when you read the terms remember that they can be synonymous. There are four main species of squash. Apart from very special circumstances these four do not cross, even if they are planted together. These families are: C. Pepo which includes most summer squash, yellow flowering ornamental gourds, Jack O'Lantern type pumpkins, acorn squash, delicata and sweet dumpling squash. This species is generally known for fast production and the ability to rebound after drought. They are, however, usually susceptable to squash vine borers. This species has very prickly stems and leaves. C. Maxima includes the really LARGE pumpkins, such as Big Max and Dill's Atlantic Giant. Also under c. maxima, one finds banana squash, Turk's Turban, buttercup, Hubbard and many many others. C. Maxima is probably the most susceptible of the species, when it comes to borers and pests. I just can't grow them here. They look like they'll produce and then BANG! They die without producing anything. But in the western part of the country, where borers are not a problem, they are wonderful. C. Maximas are known, generally, to have some of the drier, most fine grained flesh of all. C. Mixta is a species from which most people only ever see cushaws. C. Mixta is generally very resistant to pests, requiring a bit more time to mature fruit than c. pepo or c. maxima. Vines of this species are often HUGE. C. Moschata - My favorite of the species. Generally takes a bit longer to mature fruit than either c. pepo or c. maxima. Both c. moschata & c. mixta appear to require a bit more heat than the other two species. C. moschata includes the ubiquitous butternut, Tahitian Melon squash and the old time cheese pumpkins. Most of the time, when one sees a buff/tan colored squash it's a c. moschata. Both c. mixta and c. moschata are resistant, though usually not impervious, to squash vine borers. I have heard of c. mixta/c. moschata crosses, though they are very rare. I've also heard of an occasional c. maxima crossing with a c. pepo (I think). But those crosses are so rare, that for practical purposes, one should be able to grow one variety of each family and not worry about crossing. I would recommend at least 1/2 mile isolation between varieties of the same species, or else hand pollinate. If one hand pollinates it is important to be meticulous, never assuming that everything's alright, if for instance, one didn't properly close a flower. None of these four species will cross with the white flowered gourds (Lagenaria siceraria). Some seed companies list their cucurbits by species. I believe Baker Creek Heirlooms does this. Otherwise I'd recommend you do a little research on the Internet, if in doubt. I'd be happy to help too : ) Hope this helps! George Tahlequah, OK Here is a link that might be useful: Hand pollination of Squash

Hi all - my method is pretty much like Maryliz's - courtesy of Organic Gardening magazine several years back..... I squeeze out the gel & seeds from the tomatoes I want to save seed from - into a clear glass custard cup, juice glass or small jar, add some water & cover loosely w/ a piece of foil & set it on my kitchen windowsill, over the sink & watch it until a scummy mold forms on top & most of the seeds sink to the bottom.This takes several days or a week, depending on how warm it is.When it's ready, I peel off the 'skin' & dump the rest into a fine mesh sieve & rinse well under the tap, then drain & knock the seeds off onto a china saucer & spread them out to dry.I usually put a little scrap of paper w/ the variety name on the plate too. I let them dry (inside, in a corner of my 'dining room')for a week or 2 & then store in labelled & dated pill bottles or mini zip bags.

Thanks everyone for all the input and advice! I wanted a lot of seeds because I hoped to offer them to the people on seed savers forum who donated seeds to a program with people who have profound disabilities where I work. These are probably a named tomato but I don't know the variety. The Swartzentruber Amish family I buy them from doesn't know the type. They just call it a low acid tomato and have been saving the seeds for "a long time". The plants produce an amazing yield of large to very large tomatoes. The fruit is meaty and most are round or oblong, rarely lumpy and excellent for slicing. They have good old fashioned flavor. I actually like the flavor of the brandywine and better yet, Cleota Pinks a little more, but these are very worthy tomatoes. From the road or vegetable stand I can't tell if the plants are potato leafed or not. I did save seeds from several nice tomatoes that weren't blanched. Instead of fermenting them the way I usually do, I placed them in a tupperware sandwich container with pinholes punched all through the lid (from different project). They got moldy!!!!!! Don't know if I'll have any to share or not. Might go buy a few more. They sell individually for .50 a piece. So.. that's the story behind the seeds! Linda Renee