"Kay Lancaster" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 9 Sep 2006 16:43:52 -0700, Ook Ook wrote:
I let a few of my radishes go to seed, and now I have several thousand
large
dried seed pods. Each pod seems to have a half dozen or seeds in it. Is
there any good (fast) way to seperate the seeds from the pods? It's not
worth the trouble to do this by hand. I'm thinking of crushing them and
letting the wind blow the pod pieces away. Any suggestions?

If you want to get fancy, get some ribbed vinyl matting
like that used for protecting carpets in wet weather in
high traffic areas... usually black. Build yourself a little
three sided box, about 4.5" wide, by maybe 3-4" tall, 12-15" long
lined in matting, with the ribbing going across the narrow dimension
of the bottom, and climbing the long side walls and the back wall.
One of the narrow ends will be open. Take a piece of 2x4 perhaps 5-6"
long and wrap it in the matting, too, with the ribs across the 4"
dimension.

Dump about half a cup of fruits in the box; rub back and forth with
the 2x4 piece -- dump the seeds and bits of fruit wall out and continue
crushing the next batch.

A couple of choices here... pour the seeds and broken fruit walls from
one container into another, with a fan running to blow most of the fruit
walls off as the crushed fruits are poured. This is a miniature
version of a fan mill.

Or get a cardboard box -- something in the 8.5 x 11 x 1" general
dimensions
is a pretty good size-- this box should be of the type good department
stores used to give out for shirts -- about the same sort of cardboard
as a cereal box, but thicker, not corrugated cardboard.

Pour in about 1/4" of the seed/fruitwall mixture. Tilt the box
so the seeds are down next to the 8.5" side, and the bottom of the box
is slanted slightly upwards... maybe 15 degrees. Tap on the side of the
box fairly rapidly. The debris will start to climb the tilted bottom
of the box, while the seeds will keep rolling down to the bottom of the
box. When you've got pretty good separation of the two, pour off the
seeds, dump the debris and begin again. This is an approximation of
a "gravity table".

Or if your kitchen colander has the right size holes, you can use it like
a sieve.




THanks for the suggestions - hmm..colander just might do the trick, I think
I have one with just the right size