Just realized there was a "seedsave" forum, so this is a reprint from the much slower "heirloom" forum:

I am growing French Breakfast radishes for the 2nd year and finally got the formula down to actually get radishes. Now I want to work on saving the seed so I can keep this yummy experiment going. I read and understood the radish entry in "Seed to Seed." From what I read there, I'm going to need more help :)

The book says they need to be pollinated from another plant and that they easily cross pollinate with other radishes and also wild radishes. It recommends that the largest contiguous patch be used for seed saving so a higher probability exists that the flowers will be pollinated by one of your radishes.

My situation seems really bad for seed saving but I'm very new to this so that's why I'm asking all of you. I have 4 seperate patches of my French Breakfast radishes and they are all very small (after thinning they average about 20 plants). Two patches were sown in early June. One of those is bulbing nicely and the other is not doing well because it's in partial sun and in hard pakced dirt. The remaining two patches are just sprouting now - I'll be thinning within a few days. What are the easiest technique for ensuring a pure pollination? Does my situation with small patches pose a problem and does my late planting pose a problem for saving seeds? Should I give up on this year and buy more seeds next year with better planning? What do I do??

More thoughts:

The oldest patch I have is the one in the packed earth, and they aren't bulbing out at all. Should I leave these to seed since they're a lost cause anyway? They were all from the same seed packet so I'm sure it's just environment which is keeping them puny (so I'm not propagating the negative traits, right?) Is it a non-crazy plan to isolate these plants from bees and then hand pollinate them? How hard would that plan be?