cheapo carrot seed sieve

[templeton]

Templeton's Patented Nest O'Sieves
Take a plastic seed punnet tray, - about 10"X12" I reckon, one with nice sized holes in the bottom, some 2mm(=1/4 inch?) flyscreen - I used aluminum) Spread the flyscreen over the bottom of the try, jam another tray on top, rub carrot seed heads on top tray - rough chaff stays on top, big fat seeds get caught on the fly wire screen in the middle, and the fine stuff - along with a bit of fine seed with the whiskers rubbed of - falls through the bottom screen. I can tolerate the missed seed - carrots produce so much.

Sorry, I changed the bottom tray to blue half way through the photo sequence - the screen goes between the top and bottom trays
T

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[templeton]

and another pic

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[templeton]

and another

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[templeton]

voila!

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[12540dumont]

Note to anyone who got carrot seed from me:

I did not clean it, as I did not have the screens.....

[synergy]

Sorry if I sound ignorant, because I am as I have no experience with it , but do you have to remove that chaff? Can you store them and plant with it left on ?

[templeton]

Syn,
you could store the seed heads complete - but they take up more room.
The separated individual carrot seeds normally have a 'beard' or fuzz of short bristles attached - part of the original dispersal mechanism is my guess.
The seeds can be stored and sown with these bristles still attached - no problem. Commercial carrot seed has the bristles removed probably for ease of processing- again, no problems with storage and sowing.

My device does rub off some of these bristles - the small bristleless seeds tend to fall through the flywire screen and collect with the reject fine chaff below the bottom tray. I collect the seed with bristles trapped above the flyscreen between the two trays - I put up with the loss of the bristleless seed, since I've got so much seed.
That said, I did sow some of the reject fines, and lots of carrots came up.
T

[12540dumont]

Templeton, have you compared cleaned seed with non-cleaned carrot seed for germination rate?

Love the new row covers on your blog. Very cool.