Best Way To Save Tiny Seed?

I want to collect seed from my Red Dianthus but the seed is so tiny it seems nearly impossible to save and clean. Any suggestions as to the best way to go about this?

Is it a Dianthus deltoides or another species?

I have a lot of Dianthus species and usually the seeds are small, but not tiny and very easy to collect.

Jonna

Im not sure, got it from a garden center and just labeled red dianthus. The seeds are small and black and remind me of Poppy seed

Poppy seeds are more round shaped, the Dianthus seeds I know are more flat shaped.
But there are so many Dianthus species, some seeds might be different.

But as well Poppy as Dianthus seeds can be cleaned by blowing softly away the chaff. And if you just use your seeds to trade, it's not a problem that there is some chaff inbetween. Only if you want to sell your seeds, it's important to clean them well.

There might be also another thing: If the Dianthus species you have is a hybrid, it might be the seeds are not viable and that's the reason the seeds are so very small. Don't misunderstand me: it might be a specie I don't know and has very small seeds.
I can only advise you to try it out. Seeds of Dianthus that grow in your zone, usually germinate in 1-3 weeks.

Jonna

Thanks Jonna, I'll collect a few this year and see what happens when I plant them.

You can also use window screening to let small seeds pass through and hold back most of the chaff. Try clamping some scrap window screen into an embroidery hoop. Windows screening is around 24 mesh (24 wires per inch).

Most kitchen colanders are around 18 mesh, but some are said to be as fine as 30 mesh! You can pass dust-like seeds through that.

I have some 60 mesh hardware cloth, and used to have 30 mesh. What passes through them are tiny seeds, and if any chaff does pass through, you might need a microscope to tell the difference!

I tried taking seed outside to my porch, and pouring it back and forth during a mild breeze ("winnowing"). If I ever try that again, I am darn well going to do it over recently-raked soil, because another word for "winnowing is 'casing it into the wind and never seeing it again!"

Rub DRY pods and chaff enough to break the seeds loose. Don't break up the chaff any finer than necessary, if you are cleaning small seeds.

(If you are cleaning big seeds, rub the chaff to a powder and you can screen most of it out in one pass through an 18-mesh colander or 10-mesh hardware cloth.)

Somewhat bigger seeds, like Bok Choy or the biggest poppy seeds, if good and round, can be "rolled clean". If you know a hippy or pot-head, they are good at this and will work for weed!

With a big rectangular tray, you can scrape the mix to one edge, and tilt the tray so that edge is raised ... not so steeply that the chaf slides, but steeply enough that if you poke a round seed, it will start rolling. Once started, it will roll to the bottom. Scrape the chaff back and forth along the top edge to expose more seeds to the open slope.

OR, put a small batch of seeds & chaff on a dry clean dinner plate. "Roll the plate around" like panning for gold. Get the round seeds rolling dynamically, and get them mostly away from the chaff. Scrape the mostly-seeds from the plate to a big bowl with the side of a finger or credit card or paper towel.

Roll the mostly-chaff aorund some more to rescue most of the seeds from it. Discard the mostly-chaff in to a seocnd bowl.

Probably do this in many small batches, until you have one bowl of mostly-seeds and another bowl of mostly chaff.

Re-clean the mostly-seeds until they are clean enough to strioe and trade. If you still want more clean seeds than that, re-clean the mostly-chaff or try to blow the chaff away from it, to rescue more seeds.

My plan for my mostly-Alysum-chaff is to use that for my bulk sowing of Alysum. I just rename the chaff to be "mulch" and figure I am mulching while I'm sowing. I traded away the few Alyssum seeds that I was able to clean!

Corey

Good idea about using the plate. I use the "panning" technique with a bunch of coffee filters (they make a little dish that the dust tends to cling to) or in a little plastic bin from a toolbox. The chaff tends to come to the top and can be lifted off. I've tried using sifting screens specifically for seed saving, but they are expensive and come in a lot of different sizes, so I haven't really pursued that.

I ordered a bunch of 12x12" squares of hardware cloth from MSC Direct. Mostly $5-$8 per square, which was OK, but the box they shipped in was huge.

I wish I had gotten more in the 12-28 mesh range, but it turns out that you can use 30 mesh and even 60 mesh on really dust-like seeds (e.g. Lobelia and I guess Daisy).

I clamp window screening (24 mesh) in an embroidery hoop.

Hardware cloth and bolting cloth I fit into 3 or 4 inch "DWV" PVC pipe adapters.
They nest and are interchangable. Maybe $3-7 each??

- - - - - "PVC DWV Sewer & Drain Adapters"
- - - - - Katlien's PVC seed sieves
- - - - - - http://davesgarden.com/community/blogs/t/Katlian/10997/

I found some inexpensive "8 mesh" at an Ace hardware store.
At one time I had 6, 8,10, 18, 30 and 60 mesh.

I've been thinking of getting 12 or 14 mesh, 20 or 22, and more 30 or 28 mesh one of these years.


Corey