During the scyth-a-thon we ended up picking some mustard as well and peeling it to get the seeds. Needless to say that took forever and we didn't get many seeds. After thinking about it, I came up with a different method to harvest the seeds and we were able to try out the technique today.
I cut off some stalks of mustard and put them on a blue tarp. I then rolled them up like a burrito and started stomping on it. Jed was kind enough to build me a flail and we started working together on harvesting the seeds. After we flailed the mustard we lifted the blue tarp and scyphoned the mustard into a glass container. We then moved the seeds into a metal pot through a sieve, and finally we winnowed the seeds between the pot and a basket.
To put the harvest in prospective... One day of harvesting by peeling the pods = 1/2 tablespoon of seed for 4 hours of work.
One hour worth of collecting, flailing, scyphoning, seiving, and winnowing = 3/4 lb of seeds
That was just with a few sections of mustard.. we still have the whole 1/3 of the back yard to go through and collect the seeds... I think people are going to get mustard for 12th Night presents this year.
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