[Lewjam]

This may be a very silly question to those of experiance!

If i were to let a plant bolt, for example little gem lettuice, or onion can i process the seed pods in such a way that they are actually usefull for the following season?

I would quite like to grow some rocket again, but its all gone to seed. i left the flower on  becuase it had quite nice flowers but now it has large seed pods

Any advice would be great

Lew

[peterjf]

all you can do is compost bolting vegis,

[Martin]

Saving seed to sow next year isn't that difficult.
Here's a nice article from Real Seeds: LINK.
If they are F1 hybrids, or genetically modified in some way, then who knows what the result might be! (Of course it might be quite interesting).

[HilaryG]

I let a red lettuce go to seed last year and put all the seed in an envelope, I used it this year with great success. I intend to do the same with a parsnip! Good luck.

[zazen999]

I don't tend to save seeds from plants that have bolted [ie seeded too early] as what you are passing down to the next generation is the trait of seeding too early. 

I leave the LAST few, or the biggest few, of my veg to set seed, and collect them when ready. I've got 5 of last year's beetroots taking up herds of space at the moment but I'm determined now I'm 90% there to collect them.

F1s can be saved; they won't all come true to type; but there will be a selection of those that do, those that have the characteristics of one parent, and those that have the characteristics of the other parent. From then, you can select the best examples and save those the next year.