Well, I might have goofed. A friend gave me lavender seed stalks, I scrapped all the flowers off. As I do with sage, basil and all sorts of flowers with seeds. I figured I’d let the flowers really dry out and sift the seeds out. But now I learned the lavender seeds are tiny and light and don’t just sift down as other seeds do. And dried lavender flowers are very fluffy.
Any idea what I might do to find the seeds? And separate them?
You could try winnowing, where you pour it out into another container in front of a fan or on a windy day. The chaff is lighter so it should blow away, leaving the seeds to fall into the other container. Make sure you crush it manually too, to get the seeds out of the little pods.
I’m afraid to try that bc the seeds seem to be so small. But it’s the only 1 of 2 ideas I’ve come up with.
The other idea was to put it all in a cup with water, see if seeds will sink.
Hmmmmm…
Yay! Winnowing worked! Thank you, @Glenmoss
Unless you are selling the seeds, there is little need to remove the chaff. In fact, the chaff might harbor useful endophytes. Or it might serve to disguise the seeds from predators such as birds or insects. It won’t harm anything. Other flowers such as echinacea, marigolds, zinnias, etc seeds also tend to be mixed with chaff when i save seeds. I don’t stress about it. Doesn’t interfere with germination at all.
Since I’m putting them in the fridge to stratify, on wet paper towel and all that, I’ve found too much chaff and stuff rots. But I got it down to where I could pick out seeds with tweezers and put them on one paper towel. And the other that I was picking seeds out of, I also sprayed it with water and put it in a baggy also. So we’ll see.
Our winters are rather unpredictable in how much cold we’ll get, thus, the fridge.
