The Fruits of our Labor......

To follow up with my earlier post on seed collection, this week we got our equipment out from storage and started cleansing some of the seed we had collected locally here in central Nebraska. While much of the seed we use to grow our trees and shrubs can be purchased from local sources there are a few varieties we still collect by hand from local fields and along roadways. One of these are Sandcherry, or Prunus Besseyi. The small cherries have a fleshy coat that must be removed before we can dry out the seed for storage and even with our little machine it takes the better part of a week to process the 300 pounds of cherries we collected a few weeks ago.

First we remove the seed from cold storage where it has been resting since we collected it. The fruit is put into a large tub and water is added, the fruit is then allowed to soak for a few hours to soften up the fleshy layer surrounding the seed pit inside, which is what we are after.

After the fruit has been soaked it is ready to be run through our equipment to remove the pit from the fruit. This little machine seen to the right, called a Dybvig, spins kind of like a clothes washing machine. This quick spinning action rubs the fruit against each other, loosening the skins from the pit. Water is used in conjunction with the spinning action to help flush away the fleshy skin which is ejected from the spout at the bottom, leaving only clean seed spinning

inside the machine after about 5 minutes.

Sandcherry seed spinning inside the Dybvig.

Once all of the fruit has been separated from the pits inside the machine the seed is removed from the spinning chamber, rinsed and put onto a screen to dry for several hours. After the seed is dry it is weighed, cataloged, bagged up and put into a cooler for storage until we are ready to plant the following spring.

Sandcherry seed in drying rack

Close-up of processed seed