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!