[cloddopper]

Has any one had any reasonable success sowing naturally pollinated by bee home grown cabbage seed ?

[lucan rowan.]

not personally, but i would have thought it entirely possible as long as you werent too bothered about what you might get back. all the brassicas pollinate each other, so you might end up with cabbage kale, or bok choi broccoli.
 i would start by drying the seed.

[cloddopper]

Thanks,
 The seed pods have been airing cupboard dried for two weeks and were rubbed free of the shells on Friday . I hope to be sifting the debris out , vac packing & heat sealing up the seed later today ..

[Lesley Silvester]

It'll be interesting to see what you get from them. Let us know next year.

[RUSTYME]

You will only have problems 'if' , the original seed was an F1 variety or , you had other brassicas in flower at the same time as the cabbages .
Cross pollination can only occur when plants are in flower at the same time .
So you could be growing 200 different varieties but only allow one to flower .
The seed will then be that variety .
It is best to get the seed from as many plants as possible , on a small scale 20-40 separate plants , that show  the best traits of the particular plant variety you want the seeds of .
If you save seed from one or two plants that bolt , you may well be creating a strain of that variety , that will go to seed too early .
As a rule it is easy to do , you just need to follow a few very basic rules to ensure variety continuation .

[cloddopper]

Thanks Rusty ,
Luckily I did what you suggest but only had four plants grown in 2 sq mtrs to play with .
I kept the rest of the raised gardens crucifer flower free .

The plants didn't bolt... they over wintered nicely , though cabbage whites got to them three times  but they survived after applications of derris and slug nematode treatments.

The seed was sent to me by a friend.  the 40 or so seeds I got were well and truly crushed in the envelope as it went through the franking/ automatic  post handling machines, only 4 seeds survived to grow the rest were dust .