Where there's a will there's a way ... love it!

Me too!

I agree with your method! Just be sure the jar is plastic, not glass!

Start shaking fairly gently, and as soon as you have 2/3rds or 3/4 as many seeds as you want, pour those out into a separate bowl or cup before you continue shaking. They are probably clean enough "as is".

Continued and harder shaking will make lots more small chaff as it releases a few more seeds, so spare yourself any cleaning of the first 2/3 or 3/4 of the seed.

I trade the cleanest seeds and plant the seeds-with-chaff. That's like mixing fine seeds with white sand: it lets you see where you have or have not sowed thickly enough.

Delt with pricklies this fall. Love this tip, and love the presentation! Very entertaining! My fingertips thank you!

Welcome, Janice!

Great idea, starred it.

Excellent presentation. @Rickcorey, why not glass?

I definitely love this tip? I will be using this next year.

Great tip, Greene!

I still have a bag full of tithonia seed heads to clean, so I'll be trying it very soon. The reason they aren't done yet is because my fingers flat-out refused to touch them again after doing the first batch!

Deb, if you use metal cylinders like those in the demonstration, the glass jar might break when you shake it up?

Yup, vigorous shaking may break glass even if the heavy objects are not very heavy. That's the only reason I suggested glass and not plastic.

The idea of shaking with heavy objects is a great idea for any really tough seedhead or pod - not just prickly ones.

If you have fall rains like I do, you can't just leave them on the plant until they're ready to fall apart.

Instead of plastic (and or course NOT glass, duh!) I suppose you could use an old cocktail shaker. That would make a very musical sound.

Originally I had intended to use some large fender washers as the weights, but 'someone' was using those as fabric/pattern weights; needing to improvise the first things that came to hand were the sockets and some quarters.

After shaking, I dump the whole mess into a colander and then into a strainer to remove most of the 'junk'. Repeat the process about 3 times until no more seeds appear. Later, I dump the contents of the colander in an unused part of the yard to allow any stray seeds a chance to grow.

Very good tututorial... and quite original step by step. I'm glad your camera has an anti-shake mode, too! Who'd a'thunk it!?

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