Hand Thrashing seeds
Some of the crops we grow require that we do some hand thrashing in order to collect the seeds. Onions, tobacco and lettuce all fit into that category. So here is how I do it with a pail / tub, bowls, colander and a wire sifter.
Thrashing
I'm going to use our tobacco as an example. Tobacco comes in pods with about 200 seeds per pod. I used to just break them open by hand but we have lots this year. So instead, I decided to beat the pods on the side of an old wash tub. It broke open the pods and the seeds started falling out. I had to break open a few with my hand, but for the most part, this worked well. Doing this with the lettuce also worked well. Just be careful as it is very dusty. The drier the plant, the easier it is to thrash. That is why farmers cut their crops into rows to let it dry before they harvest. If it is too wet, it is 'tough' to thrash. :)
Sifting
As you can tell, a lot of plant material broke off with the thrashing process. So now we need to start sifting it all so that we can separate the plant material from the seed. I find using a colander works well for this process. I put a bowl down to catch the seed and dump the material into the colander and start shaking it. I also get my hand in there to agitate the material to shake the seed away from the plant material. What ever material is left in the colander I then dump for composting.
When I am done, there is still some plant material that made it through this first sifting process. So I then use a screen sifter that is just big enough for the seed to fall through but nothing else. I then go through a second sifting process to remove more of the plant material.
Blowing away the chaff
For our own use, this would be good enough. If I am working on lettuce seed I would then go outside in a light breeze and drop the seed into the bowl from about a foot above so that the chaff would blow away. If there is no breeze then I would just blow on the chaff as it falls. Don't worry about some of the seed blowing away too. If it is light enough to blow away while the majority fall into the bowl, then that seed is most likely not viable any way. In the end, we are looking for a product that is fairly clean and viable. Best to do this process outside as it is dirty!
I estimate that we got about 40% of the seeds from our tobacco as some of the pods were still green, seeds stick to the stalks of the plant and I just did not need that many. Even at 40%, we still harvested nearly a pint of seeds. Enough to start my own plantation if I wanted to do so! lol
Nearly a pint of tobacco seed.
Storage
It is really important that your seeds are dry before you store them, otherwise they could mold or spoil. Not a good thing to happen especially if you need those seeds for next year. So we make sure the plants are dry when we harvest seed or set them out to dry before we package them up. Our seeds are stored in paper bags in a cool, dark place in our earthship. We tried storing them in jars but had moisture issues and lost lots of seeds. This seems to work best for us, so this is how we store it. Seeds seem to stay viable for at least a year and usually two or three years. Long enough for our own use.
Our seed box.
For our onions, this is the first time we were able to save seeds, so I found it a bit more challenging to do this process with them due to the seed pods being so hard. But I did manage to get some thrashing and sifting done but I was left with a lot of plant material still. But I'm good with it and I'll just store it this way and see how we do next year planting our own onions.
Onion seeds are black, plant material is the white and green stuff.
Remember that plants like onions, kale and carrots all go to seed during the second season. So these seeds will not produce more seeds until year #2. I have to keep the onions that I grow from these seeds and replant them in the following year so that I can continue to save seeds. I will most likely repeat what I did this year just so that I can collect more seeds next year. Then we should be set! I hope you enjoyed this post!
This would have been so handy for me to have known earlier lol! May I link this article and feature your username in the next issue of the Weekly Homesteading Newsletter? Let me know as soon as possible! Thanks @wwf!
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Hey there! I just wanted to inform you that this article has been featured in the most recent Weekly Homesteading Newsletter! Please check it out if you are interested! Thank you and have a great Sunday!
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Awesome post. Thank you!
A very helpful post. This is the first year that I am saving my seeds for next year (slow learner). Thanks for sharing.
Woweeee that is a LOT of tobacco seed, right on!! I cannot wait til the spring when I plant what you sent me this year :) :) :)
lol. Yes, it is a lot and that was not even all of it. We will plant more than this year as it looks like mom wants to smoke our tobacco in an attempt to quit. So we will see how it goes. Then we will have even more to give away.
Oooh right on! Will she be using a pipe?
To be honest though, I would like a pipe. We smoke our tobacco in ceremony and it smells very nice and we have had lots of compliments about it. So I would like to get a pipe for myself. Just as my grandfather did when I was a kid. He died when I was 13. Pipe reminds me of him. I miss him dearly.
Mmmmm, I can easily picture you with a pipe :) :) :)
Did you do anything special when curing/drying it?
It has been hanging in our shop for the last few months. We just harvested it today. We used to air dry method as there are numerous methods. We wanted very low sugar content to help her out. I just ran a couple ropes across the room and hung the tobacco right on the stalk. Leaves, seed pods and all. I lost some seed to the floor as some of the pods opened up and dropped to the floor. Laying a tarp down would catch those seeds too.
Okay, cool, that's how I did mine this year too!
No. I think she will buy papers and roll them herself with a tool that packs the tobacco and inserts it into the paper.
Nice walkthrough! I've done some seed saving and used similar methods, but I've never done the sifting step. I go straight to the winnowing after thrashing. Does sifting speed up the process overall?
Depends on the seed size, but yes, I find it makes it easier and faster.
This is a good post on harvesting seeds.
I usually harvest carrot seeds and sometimes onion seeds. I haven't tried planting onions from seed yet, but I know it works because the onion seed pods that I leave on the stalks spread their seeds around and I have tiny onions in odd places in the spring. The carrots are good for that also. This is the first year in the last 4 that I actually planted carrots in the garden, they've been self planting for the past 4 or 5 years, but they're all over the garden where they get disturbed when I plant other crops.
I also harvested a bunch of seed pods from the hollyhock flower stalks that somehow appeared in my yard this year. I suspect the hollyhocks will still be all over the garden next year due to the seed pods that were still green when I harvested the dried ones. I still need to harvest some of the marigold seeds for next year also.
Thanks for the lesson, we keep all of our seeds. We're still still fairly new and haven't grown anything that required thrashing.
A great post. Thanks for