Having an opportunity to harvest and process seeds from the plants that we tend with love all season long is such a beautiful gift. Collecting, cleaning and replanting seeds allows us gardeners to more fully participate in the continuous green spiral of life. What a joy to receive and experience these gifts!

If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve collected and planted seeds before, but if you haven’t yet—I congratulate you on your curiosity about saving and cleaning seeds!

Wherever you are in your gardening path, cleaning seeds is very useful skillset that is ready to yield vibrant new plants next season, resilience in the garden, and—perhaps much more importantly—abundant beauty and deep meaning to the inquisitive gardener.

Seed cleaning can be a very technical, highly rational process, but I personally also consider seed cleaning a creative journey. After all we are working with living, breathing plants and living, breathing seeds. Whether we recognize it or not, when we hold a seed in our hand we are aligning with the ultimate creative—the creator of life—our Earth Mother.

Why Clean Our Seeds?

I have collected seeds from my garden since my first season ever, when I saved my first seeds for replanting—green pole beans! (I still sentimentally plant those same beans to this day, two states and 4 gardens later.) Since I started gardening I’ve collected some seeds every season, but it wasn’t until a few years into my homesteading journey when I became serious about cleaning seeds.

There are a few common reasons gardeners want to grow, save and clean seeds:

• Garden Performance: Have better performing seed for replanting next season.
• Eating Seeds: Seeds like grains, legumes, pseudo grains and myriad spices are only palatable when they are cleaned.
• Storage Space: Reduce the amount of volume collected seed takes in storage.
• Income from Seeds: Sell seeds from the garden as a side gig or business.
• Sharing Seeds: Share high quality seeds with friends, family and community via seed swaps and seed libraries.

I’ll admit guilty to all of the reasons above! In fact, once Ann and I started learning how to grow, collect and clean seeds in bulk, it opened up these other possibilities for our family.

Honestly, there are countless other reasons to work with, play with and get to know seeds on a personal level. (If you’re curious to explore a few more, our free download Living Abundantly With Seeds shares 27 beautiful ways to align with seeds.)

Since we first started cleaning seeds in bulk in 2018 we haven’t turned back. In fact we’ve “doubled down” on our commitment to seeds because seeds have given so much back to us in so many ways without asking anything in return, not the least of which are more joy and love in our lives.

Well, before I get too mushy about seeds (it’s easy for me!) I’ll get back to the topic at hand. Before we can begin cleaning our seeds, we first need to harvest them from the garden.

Harvesting (Collecting) Seed

It’s time to harvest seed when the seeds are ripe. How do we know when seeds are ripe? There are some rule of thumbs we can rely on.

When a plant has made a flower stalk, flowered and then that flower stalk has dried up and turned brown, the seed contained within the flowerheads or pods is ripe and ready for harvest.

For wet seeds, that are surrounded by wet fruits (like tomatoes, watermelons, squash) the seeds are typically ripe and mature when the fruit is ready to harvest for eating.

I highly recommend getting to know the seeds during the ripening stage, after the flower has been pollinated and as the seeds are swelling. Check in on them regularly and see how the seeds change color and size as they mature. Break them open and see how much the seed has filled the seed shell.

Getting to know each plant and their seed in this way has really deepened my relationship with each plant. It’s helped me to learn clues and patterns that I can see expressed in different ways across different plants in the garden.

Harvesting seeds often comes down to harvesting the dry seed heads from the plants into a paper bag, bucket, tarp or some other container that doesn’t let seeds slip through. Or if it is a wet seed we harvest the fruits by clipping or removing them from the plant.

Either way we are setting them aside somewhere safe and protected if we are not immediately processing them further.

Dry Processing vs Wet Processing Seed

In the last section we alluded to wet and dry seeded crops as we talked about harvesting seed. What are wet and dry seeds?

Dry seeded crops have seeds that we typically allow to dry up on their seed stalks right on the plants before we harvest them. These are plants like kale, beans, mustard, corn, most flowers and many others who send their flowers relatively high into the sky, often on long stalks, and then after making seeds dry and turn brown and crispy.

We’ll talk more about dry processing seeds in the Threshing, Screening and Winnowing sections below.

Wet seeded crops live in what we typically consider wet, juicy(ish) fruits like watermelons, melons, tomatoes, tomatillos, peppers and squash. Wet seeds stay wet once they are fully ripe and if left too long in the garden, their fruits often end up rotting, fermenting, splitting, molding, freezing, etc.

Wet seeds are usually ripe and mature at the same time we’d want to eat the ripe fruit. There are a few exceptions (e.g. cucumbers who need to go past edible stage to produce ripe seeds), but typically we can harvest the fruit, extract the seeds and then enjoy eating the fruit’s flesh. It’s a win-win!

Wet seeded crops require their own set of processing methods because we need to separate seeds from wet flesh, clean it and then dry it off before it molds.

In wet processing seeds, sometimes referred to as the wet method, we often use some combination of mashing, plucking, fermenting, decanting, rinsing and finally drying the seeds.

Learn more about wet processing seeds: Wet Processing Seeds: A Sticky, Juicy Proposition

Threshing Seed

After seed heads have been harvested from the garden or field we often need to thresh them to release the seeds from the seedheads.

Some plants release their seeds very easily while others hold on tight. It’s a whole spectrum. The more ripe a seed is when harvested, the easier it will release from the seed head.

Threshing basically comes down to pouring seed out, plucking seeds or cracking, crushing, banging or beating the seed heads in order to release the seeds. After threshing we are usually left with loose seeds mixed up with broken bits of seed heads, stalks, petals, insects, dust and other matter.

We refer these relatively small and broken plant bits (that are not seeds) as chaff. Further processing is usually needed to separate the threshed seed from chaff, so we move on to screening and/or winnowing.

Learn more about threshing seeds: Threshing Seeds to Release the Magical Seeds of Life

Screening Seed

Screening seed from chaff is fun! We get to witness a large bulky amount of seeds and crunchy plant matter shrink down to a concentrated amount, often far less than 10% of the original volume!

We use screens to filter seeds from chaff that is different in size from the seeds. Having a variety of screen sizes is very helpful to remove chaff from different size seeds.

When the screen has holes that are bigger than the seed, it lets seeds pass through while larger chaff remains behind. When the screen has holes that are smaller than the seed, it lets fine chaff pass through while the seeds stay behind.

I enjoy watching the seeds fall through the screens. With each pass of screening the seeds are revealed as they magically appear out of the leaves, stems and chaff.

Learn more about screening seeds: Screening Seeds from Bits of Leaves, Stems & Chaff

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Winnowing Seed

Winnowing, like screening, is a method of separating seeds from chaff. While screening separates seeds based on size, winnowing separates seeds from chaff based on mass.

Winnowing relies on the wind to blow lighter chaff off of heavier seeds. We can use natural wind, but most modern gardeners and seed growers rely on wind from electric fans, especially for precise winnowing. That said, winnowing with natural wind is still a beautiful option.

We use a container to catch our seeds as we winnow and chaff is blown off with the wind. Winnowing also helps us blow off lighter seeds which are often weaker or not fully developed. So winnowing is a simple, but powerful tool for refining our seeds.

Depending on our goals winnowing can help us clean off a little chaff or we can fine tune our process until we are left with only the highest quality seeds.

Learn more about winnowing seeds: Winnowing Seed (Give) Thanks to the Wind

Storing Seed

After our seeds are cleaned we need to store them until they are planted, eaten, shared or sold. Sometimes they are only stored over winter until they are re-planted.

We may want to store seeds for several or many seasons. I recommend planning on that as a matter of fact, so that we have backup seeds in case something undesirable happens to this year’s crop.

To reliably store seeds we need to keep them cool, dark and dry. This rule of thumb will help us prevent seeds from molding, germinating and decaying.

We also want to keep seeds protected from critters like mice and other rodents. Glass and metal barriers are impenetrable to rodents.

Though they are dormant, seeds are living, breathing life forms. Treat them with care, respect and honor, provide them with the best storage conditions you can, and they will reward you with strong germination and happy plants!

Cleaned Seed! What’s Next?

When we learn how to clean our seeds we have the opportunity to scale up a little or a lot, in terms of how many seeds we wish to collect and save. This also opens new possibilities for what we can do with our clean seeds:

Plant Seeds

Planting clean seeds is a given right? Cleaning the seeds we grew gives us the opportunity to reduce the amount of infertile and weaker seeds that we usually don’t want to plant. Cleaning seeds will help maximize our germination rate AND end up with the strongest seeds out of what we collected. Our garden is that much more resilient for the extra care we’ve taken with our seeds.

Eat Seeds

Cleaning seeds in bulk opens a wide range of possibilities for eating seed that we grow in our gardens! Once we started cleaning seed we found ourselves eating not just home grown dried corn and beans, but other grains like wheat and millet, nutrient dense seeds like amaranth and clary sage seeds, medicinal weed seeds like burdock and chicory seeds, condiments like mustard and sesame seeds and other spices like cumin and fennel seeds. Our seed cleaning toolkit also helped speed up bulk processing tree seeds like acorns and hazelnuts!

Share Seeds

Your cleaned seed is going to be that much more valuable to other gardeners because it’s easier to plant and a higher quality than if it was not carefully cleaned. Give the gift of life and share your seeds with gardeners that you know. Consider offering your seeds at local seed swaps or a local seed library. Not sure where the closest seed library is? Try searching the Seed Library Network’s Map!

Sell Seeds

When we first started learning how to grow, save and clean seeds we were empowered to start a part time seed business from our homestead. With a pinch of knowledge, a heart full of inspiration and a big scoop of luck we were up and running. If you want to learn more, here are a few articles I wrote about selling seeds:

• Now is a Great Time to Start a Homestead Seed Business (or Gig)
• Our Family’s Experience Growing and Selling Seeds

I Love Seeds and Gardeners

Congratulations on taking this journey with the seeds you grew in your garden!

Really, I congratulate you from my heart!

Working with seeds and getting to know them better has really brought me so much joy. Each year those relationships and that joy deepens in my heart. I suspect that joy is universal for gardeners everywhere.

Just as I can recognize a gardener from their dirty fingernails, I can also recognize gardeners from the radiant joy I see on their faces when they meet and connect with plants—Plants help our hearts shine through more brightly.

We are all on our own life journeys and for us gardeners, plants help us connect with our fellow humans. It’s a beautiful thing—to share love. And when we share seeds it’s a token of our love.

In those precious moments when I can be present with that love in my heart and with the seeds in my hand—it’s a good day to be alive.

Want to learn how to process bulk seed at a homestead garden scale? Create more resilience and become empowered to clean the seeds that you grow to stock your pantry, share with your community, or sell to other gardeners.

See our course Seed Processing for Abundance for details!

Recommended Reading

Living Abundantly With Seeds — 27 ways seeds offer connection, empowerment and resilience for your family. A free, inspirational guide.