Separating Seeds Stuck Together?

[Cole_Robbie]

Is there a trick for this? It's my first year saving seeds, and a lot of them are clumped together. A pocket knife is the best idea I have for separating them, but I am open to suggestions. Thanks.

[Lee]

Rubbing them between your fingers is a good method that has worked for me.
I'm able to "declump" large quantities quickly with this method.

Lee

[habitat_gardener]

Originally Posted by Lee

Rubbing them between your fingers is a good method that has worked for me.
I'm able to "declump" large quantities quickly with this method.

Me too. If I'm sharing seed, after the first few batches I stop counting and send it out with some clumps of 2-3.

I've also used a pencil to declump, or a butter knife, or a popsicle stick, or a plant label. I'd think a pocket knife might nick the seed, whereas the rounded tip of a pencil, the dull edge of a butter knife or popsicle stick, or the thin edge of a rigid plant label would just glance off the seed.

The main danger of using a tool to declump is that seeds tend to jump off the table! I make sure to declump one variety at a time, and I put the to-be-declumped varieties where they won't get contaminated with the ones in the process of declumping.

[Tomato Beth]

I found that stirring them up on the paper plate after the first 24 hours of drying seems to keep them from sticking together as much.

[kath]

I realize it's too late now, but I think it's easier to separate them when they're wet so I use 2 toothpicks to space them out on a paper plate. More time-consuming maybe, but they dry faster, too.

[Father'sDaughter]

Originally Posted by kath

I realize it's too late now, but I think it's easier to separate them when they're wet so I use 2 toothpicks to space them out on a paper plate. More time-consuming maybe, but they dry faster, too.

I do the same, except with the round wooden chopstick I use to ream out the gel and seeds for seed saving. And agreed -- while it is more time consuming, they dry better, there are no clumps, and I have the opportunity to weed out any seeds that I don't like the looks of.

[JLJ_]

Originally Posted by kath

I realize it's too late now, but I think it's easier to separate them when they're wet so I use 2 toothpicks to space them out on a paper plate. More time-consuming maybe, but they dry faster, too.

Originally Posted by Father'sDaughter

I do the same, except with the round wooden chopstick I use to ream out the gel and seeds for seed saving. And agreed -- while it is more time consuming, they dry better, there are no clumps, and I have the opportunity to weed out any seeds that I don't like the looks of.

Same here. You've gotten some good suggestions for dry seed separating for this time -- but for future reference, it's much easier to separate fermented seeds when they're wet, and also makes it easier to remove anything unwanted. Might be too difficult for someone who saves very large quantities of seed, but some years I've saved several dozen batches this way (not all the same day) and it's not taken too much time.

I put drained seeds onto an uncoated paper plate, which has the seeds' data already written on it, along the edge, then separate seeds with a couple of small stainless steel tools I have, one a probe, with a bent rounded tip that is about the size of a well used, unsharpened pencil point, and the other which has an end shaped like an elongated horse's hoof perhaps 1/4 inch wide and longer than it is wide (I mean shaped like the hoof of a flat footed horse, with no frog [g] ). Any small cleanable tool of that general sort would probably work. Using the tools makes it easier to manipulate wet or dry seeds precisely and with less chance that they'll jump away, or stick to fingers.

After they've dried until the seeds and plate are not obviously wet, I take the horse-hoof tool and use it, flat side the plate, to loosen the seeds from the plate -- they may still end up slightly stuck to the plate when fully dry, but they're not hard to remove. Though if I had them in a place where it was likely that someone might tip them over, I'd probably leave them alone and let them stick to the plate for security.

[Worth1]

I outsource this sort of work to China.

Worth

[Cole_Robbie]

Thanks for the suggestions.

How do seed companies keep their seeds from being stuck together?

[Tomato Beth]

Originally Posted by Worth1

I outsource this sort of work to China.

Worth

ROFLMAO

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by Cole_Robbie

Thanks for the suggestions.

How do seed companies keep their seeds from being stuck together?

It depends on the seed company but I think most these days have automatic seed packing machines such as the ones pictured in the following link.

https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q...iller+machines

Scroll down a bit until you come to the seed ones. Since i've never been inside of one of those machines, I don't know how they do seperate the seeds, when needed.

I know SSE has one, but don't know about any other places.

Most of the larger seed vendors subcontract out for seeds from some commercial places, so for sure they have them/

And then there are places where a PERSON laboriously seperates saved seeds and does the packing manually.

Hope that answers your question kohlrabi, heck,I've wanted to address you that way for a long time.

Carolyn, who as some above mentioned, used to dump the wet processed seeds on a prelabelled paper plate, drain off any excess water and then using her human finger spread the seeds around to seperate most of them, and when packing seeds if thee were a few stuck together just took those between her thumb and first finger and rubbed them and they fell apart just fine.

[Cole_Robbie]

thanks Carolyn

[Father'sDaughter]

Originally Posted by JLJ_

I put drained seeds onto an uncoated paper plate, which has the seeds' data already written on it, along the edge,

Or, to save one more step -- write the seed data on a piece of blue painter's tape, stick it to the fermentation container (I use half-pint caning jars), then peel it off the container and stick it to the edge of the paper plate you'll dry them on. Then when the seeds are dry and you move them to their storage container, peel the tape off the plate and re-use it to dry the next batch of seeds. And since I usually buy coated paper plates, I simply turn them inside out for seed drying.

[JLJ_]

Originally Posted by Father'sDaughter

Or, to save one more step -- write the seed data on a piece of blue painter's tape, stick it to the fermentation container (I use half-pint caning jars), then peel it off the container and stick it to the edge of the paper plate you'll dry them on. Then when the seeds are dry and you move them to their storage container, peel the tape off the plate and re-use it to dry the next batch of seeds. And since I usually buy coated paper plates, I simply turn them inside out for seed drying.

Probably depends upon how many seeds you dry -- but I've found that a large package of cheap, uncoated house brand paper plates from Walmart (or probably a number of other places) lasts a long time, and then each seed batch gets a clean drying place.

And I agree that blue tape is a Great Treasure -- right in there with duct tape and baling wire as an indispensable survival item -- and I do use it to label the fermentation bottles, seed planting cups, etc. -- but blue tape is made to release more easily than other tapes, and with it -- and the paper plate it's stuck to -- possibly getting wet, then dry, I'm wary of it coming off the paper plates during the drying process, which is why I write on the plates. Might depend upon the design of the plates you use how firmly it attaches.

[Cole_Robbie]

I have good luck drying seeds on wax paper. They don't stick to the paper at all - just each other.