herbs and seed

I did stuff. Cut two large bunches of tarragon and dill to hang for drying. I tried to leave plenty of dill for the swallowtail caterpillars, and checked that the plants I cut didn't house any baby ones. Stripped the stems of summery savory I'd dried previously, and stored in jars. Also cut back the lavender and hung some of that to dry (I like to put sachets of it in my sock drawer). And cut those two stems of false indogo seedpods- just because I was curious on it.

The seeds. My smaller plant never surfaced this spring, so I do want to try and grow more.

Most of the work I did was with dill seed, though. I had these umbrels cut from when the older plants were so tall, hanging to dry in a paper bag. I think I left them too long- now I learned that it's easier to separate the seed cleanly if the stems are still a bit pliable. I put a small handful of seed mixed with chaff in an envelope for storage, to grow next year. Doesn't matter for that if it's super clean. 

But I wanted to use the rest of the seed for cooking. Shaking the bag got lots of seed off, not all- a ton left on the stems. As you probably know, it grows in these clusters of umbrels.

I found two ways to get the rest of the seed off, more or less. One was to break off each individual small umbrel from the larger bunch-

pinch it flat between fingers and pluck the seeds off with other hand.

This got a pretty clean bunch of seed, which I was satisfied with. There's still some bits of stem in there, that clung to the seeds.

My next method I realized by happenchance. I had more seed, broken roughly off the umbrels and rubbed between fingers to loosen chaff, in a plastic bowl. I had thought to take this outside and winnow it, but that didn't work- the seed is about the same weight as the chaff. But when I tipped the bowl, I noticed that some seeds would jump ahead of the chaff falling on the side of the curve, and the chaff would cling to the side of the bowl- due to static electricity I think-

By sifting with my finger and tipping in stages around the circumference of the bowl, and then swiping out the free seeds onto tabletop, I was able to separate them. This lot of seeds came much cleaner.

Both methods are quite tedious, and for all that work I only filled half a jar!

Well, next time I'll pay attention how dried the umbrels are, and do this sooner. The leftover bits: