Blog Post #8: Harvest Requirements
It turns out I have picked some of the trickier seeds especially when it comes to harvesting, threshing, and cleaning. All three are share many similarities. They need to be windrowed, and require different steps for de-burring or breaking seeds apart.
Carrots: They are going to mature unevenly. The primary umbel will mature first followed by the secondary and tertiary. You can tell when the seed is mature by looking at the color of the seed and when it turns an earthen brown color it is ready. Due to our short season, I am going to be looking to harvest the plants when the primary umbels are fully matured and the secondary umbel seed set is on it's way to being mature. The plants will be cut and windrowed no higher than 2 feet for 5-10 days. The trick is that we do not want them to get too dry and brittle. After 5-10 days the stalks will be threshed and then you need to consider de-bearding and further cleaning with screens.
Beets and Spinach are very similar. We want to harvest beets and spinach when about 75% of the seeds have turned than tan brown typical of a mature seed. You can monitor the maturity by inspecting the endosperm by squeezing the seed open and observing the endosperm. When it is milky white or grey it is still immature. When the endosperm is a chalky white it is fully mature. So we want 75% to be fully mature when we harvest. We will cut both these plants and windrow for up to 10 days. The beet seeds easily shatter so we want to consider placing them on some row cover to catch the seed. We can turn the spinach windrows but should leave the beet windrows alone. Beets can be threshed early morning to take advantage of the early dew. Thresh both spinach and beets with a belt thresher or mini-combine. Spinach can be screened and fanned to clean it. Spinach you can also use a rotary de-burrer to help clean the seed.
In all of these cases, there is special equipment used to make the jobs easier. I'm definitely going to have to look into some simpler methods for this first year of production because I don't have a lot of money to invest at this point.
Carrots: They are going to mature unevenly. The primary umbel will mature first followed by the secondary and tertiary. You can tell when the seed is mature by looking at the color of the seed and when it turns an earthen brown color it is ready. Due to our short season, I am going to be looking to harvest the plants when the primary umbels are fully matured and the secondary umbel seed set is on it's way to being mature. The plants will be cut and windrowed no higher than 2 feet for 5-10 days. The trick is that we do not want them to get too dry and brittle. After 5-10 days the stalks will be threshed and then you need to consider de-bearding and further cleaning with screens.
Beets and Spinach are very similar. We want to harvest beets and spinach when about 75% of the seeds have turned than tan brown typical of a mature seed. You can monitor the maturity by inspecting the endosperm by squeezing the seed open and observing the endosperm. When it is milky white or grey it is still immature. When the endosperm is a chalky white it is fully mature. So we want 75% to be fully mature when we harvest. We will cut both these plants and windrow for up to 10 days. The beet seeds easily shatter so we want to consider placing them on some row cover to catch the seed. We can turn the spinach windrows but should leave the beet windrows alone. Beets can be threshed early morning to take advantage of the early dew. Thresh both spinach and beets with a belt thresher or mini-combine. Spinach can be screened and fanned to clean it. Spinach you can also use a rotary de-burrer to help clean the seed.
In all of these cases, there is special equipment used to make the jobs easier. I'm definitely going to have to look into some simpler methods for this first year of production because I don't have a lot of money to invest at this point.
Hi Lisa; You've done a great job of identifying when seed is ready for harvest, and of making provision for your shorter growing season by planning to harvest the seed and windrow it, allowing you to harvest plants with some seed mature, but some still to mature after it's harvested. It's great that you caught on to that, as it will probably be essential in your growing zone.
ReplyDeleteI want to encourage you to look into low-tech threshing and seed cleaning options. Using some of the larger or expensive machinery like the belt thresher, combine, or deburrers you have mentioned is, as you also mentioned, too costly to be practical right now. I can give you a quick rundown of my hand-cleaning method for these seeds.
Carrots: Rub seeds off individual umbels with your hands (while wearing work gloves) and try to minimize the amount of stem, and sticks (even the small sticks on the umbel that the seeds are borne on) as they make the final cleaning of the seed harder to do. Once you have all the seed off the plants, either rub between your hands to de-beard them or place on tarp and dance on it all with your feet. That will get the carrot seed fully de-bearded. Now your job is to winnow and screen away all the fine dust and other chaf from the seeds. Finally, use an appropriate size screen to remove the smallest and often non-viable seed from your lot. You will end up with a nice seed lot of clean seed, uniformly sized, and hopefully of good germination. Have fun playing around with it and keep notes of what works for future reference so you can do it quicker next time.
Spinach: Strip the dried seeds off the stalks of the spinach by hand. Then use fans to winnow away any chaf. You will be left with a nice clean seed lot, but, you will notice that many of the seeds are in clumps. I use a plywood spinout (kind of like a 3" wide piece of doweling) and roll it over the seeds which I've spread on a table. Sort of like using a giant rolling pin. This crushes apart the seed clumps into individual seeds. A final winnowing gives me a nice clean seed lot
Beets: Very similiar process to spinach.
Note these are techniques I've developed through trial and error, but certainly not the only way to clean the seeds. Get creative with the tools and equipment you have around. You don't need to spend much money to clean seed! And enjoy the process. A little CBC, music, or good conversation always makes the work fun. Plus it's very rewarding making a clean seed lot after all the work of growing it.