How to sort your seeds ?

Hello.
When I harvest my seeds, there are always residues of other things, like with sunflower seeds. It takes a lot of time to remove them. Do you have a technique for efficiently separating the seeds from these residues? Thank you.

Depending on the type of residue, you could try winnowing. Where you use a fan to blow away the lighter pieces, but the seed falls back down.

In cases where the seeds are heavier than the residue, I've found that shaking the seeds in a round-bottomed bowl helps. Shake with "round" motions, so that the seeds slowly move around the rim of the bowl as you go. The chaff will tend to gather on top of the seeds, mainly in the middle of the bowl, and you can remove it, with a spoon if the pieces are too small for your fingers to be practical. Think gold panning, only without water (and what you're after is arguably more valuable than gold!) For this to work optimally, you need to have enough material. It won't work very well if the seeds and chaff only just cover the bottom of the bowl.

One advantage of this method is that it also works well on tiny seeds that would be tricky to winnow. I've successfully cleaned broadleaf plantain seeds, which are extremely small, like this.

Oh, and welcome to Permies!

I have two basic approaches -- neither one of which works well for sunflower seeds, I haven't got that one figured out, though it would be easier if I was only growing one seed-size.

1) Like Matt mentioned, I winnow by pouring from one bowl to another on a windy day. Some seeds get away, but mostly, the chaff blows off. I haven't ever gotten out a fan to simulate wind, but I've been tempted. It takes a little practice to figure out how to aim the main stream of seeds so that it makes it in the bowl, especially as the wind shifts direction or strength, but it's not too bad. When I'm doing this, I combine in Eino's swirling the bowl suggestions too. If you can get all the chaff to percolate to the top, you can scoop or blow it off and then the winnowing goes more quickly.

2) I also use a set of graduated mesh sieves like this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0946BX45M. Depending on your seed size and the characteristics of the chaff you're dealing with, you can use it to let the seeds fall through and leave the chaff behind, or vice versa. Or, honestly, both in different orders.

I guess I am a lazy gardener, as I just save everything because that residue doesn't hurt being planted.

For tomato, fermenting help remove that residue, I believe.

Anne Miller wrote:I guess I am a lazy gardener, as I just save everything because that residue doesn't hurt being planted.

For tomato, fermenting help remove that residue, I believe.

Pretty much the same.

Sometimes I will shake the container and blow gently to remove chaff.

For 'wet' seeds like tomato, squash, watermelon, cantaloupe, I rinse them at the sink in a strainer, then I put them in my mouth and slurp all the juice/residue off and spit them onto newspaper to dry. They dry much more quickly and are less likely to get mold.

Thom Bri wrote:[For 'wet' seeds like tomato, squash, watermelon, cantaloupe, I rinse them at the sink in a strainer, then I put them in my mouth and slurp all the juice/residue off and spit them onto newspaper to dry. They dry much more quickly and are less likely to get mold.

Fermenting is suppose to remove the juice/residue though not a yummy.