
Seed Saving Screens
I recently purchased seed saving screens from Anna at LovePlantLife. I’m quite excited as it’s going to make my life a little simpler and I’m going to multi-task it, as one of the screens is the perfect size for processing culinary herbs.
I’m going to use it on this occasion to process my lemon verbena seeds….

Spent lemon verbena flower spikes
So it’s basically a cake tin with four different mesh dent sized bottoms.
One thing I quickly learned was that you should use a bowl that is bigger than the tin or else this happens….

Oops! The side dropped down and nearly scattered my seed!
(I can hear Anna chuckling from here)
Have two bowls at the ready because you may find you need to transfer your siftings to a smaller screen because seeds and crap have fallen through.
Workout what the aim is; crumble leaves and stems small enough to fall through the gaps so you’re left with seeds or have seeds fall through and the crap can be tossed from off the screen. Guess it depends on the seed and what they’re surrounded by.
You could just use the screen within a bowl..
but it might slip and everything goes into the bowl (if you’re rubbing) or fly (if you’re shaking). You could get your son to hold it for you if you’re rubbing vigorously within the tin, because it does have a tendency to slip around…or get a better bowl! (note to self)

..and he just wanted his photo taken!
All in all it was fun and easy to use and I’m lookung forward to using it more as we come up to seed saving time (and drying herbs time).

Now will lets hope the blighters grow!
[…] A lot of herbs will self seed readily, but there are some that you might want to save just in case and it’s nice to share seeds. The seeds are found within the flowers, once the flowers start dying/drying off on the plant that’s when the seeds start hardening and you can start collecting. Store your seeds in paper envelopes, making sure the seeds are properly dry. Seed saving screens are good for seeds that need cleaning, not dirt hopefully, but husks or flower material etc. Here’s an ooold post about using seed saving screens. […]