I let a few of my radishes go to seed, and now I have several thousand large dried seed pods. Each pod seems to have a half dozen or seeds in it. Is there any good (fast) way to seperate the seeds from the pods? It's not worth the trouble to do this by hand. I'm thinking of crushing them and letting the wind blow the pod pieces away. Any suggestions?
If you want to get fancy, get some ribbed vinyl matting like that used for protecting carpets in wet weather in high traffic areas... usually black. Build yourself a little three sided box, about 4.5" wide, by maybe 3-4" tall, 12-15" long lined in matting, with the ribbing going across the narrow dimension of the bottom, and climbing the long side walls and the back wall. One of the narrow ends will be open. Take a piece of 2x4 perhaps 5-6" long and wrap it in the matting, too, with the ribs across the 4" dimension.
Dump about half a cup of fruits in the box; rub back and forth with the 2x4 piece -- dump the seeds and bits of fruit wall out and continue crushing the next batch.
A couple of choices here... pour the seeds and broken fruit walls from one container into another, with a fan running to blow most of the fruit walls off as the crushed fruits are poured. This is a miniature version of a fan mill.
Or get a cardboard box -- something in the 8.5 x 11 x 1" general dimensions is a pretty good size-- this box should be of the type good department stores used to give out for shirts -- about the same sort of cardboard as a cereal box, but thicker, not corrugated cardboard.
Pour in about 1/4" of the seed/fruitwall mixture. Tilt the box so the seeds are down next to the 8.5" side, and the bottom of the box is slanted slightly upwards... maybe 15 degrees. Tap on the side of the box fairly rapidly. The debris will start to climb the tilted bottom of the box, while the seeds will keep rolling down to the bottom of the box. When you've got pretty good separation of the two, pour off the seeds, dump the debris and begin again. This is an approximation of a "gravity table".
Or if your kitchen colander has the right size holes, you can use it like a sieve.
THanks for the suggestions - hmm..colander just might do the trick, I think I have one with just the right size :)
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.