One seed produces hundreds. My God provides in abundance to feed His children.  Through patience and wisdom, one can feed their family.  Here we see what happens to the lettuce plant if we forgo eating it, and allow it to complete its life-cycle.

The main stem shoots up, aka bolting.  Flowers develop, bloom and then turn into these seed clusters with their very own parachutes that they can use to ride the wind and spread their seed.

Rubbing the seed clusters between your fingers will separate them from the plant.  The seeds and the chaff fall below, and we recommend working over a clean surface.  Next we use a technique called winnowing to separate the seed from the chaff.  Lightly blowing over the surface will clear the lighter chaff from the pile and the heavier seed stays in the tray.  Continue to rub and lightly blow until the seeds have been cleaned of most if not all of the fluff chaff.

Finally, store the seeds in a cool dry place.  I’ve heard it told that there is a “rule of 100” when it comes to storing seed.  If the temperature plus the humidity level exceeds 100, then the seeds will not store properly.  We keep these in an envelop in a cool, dry place, and have plenty of seed for the following growing season.  He supplies us in abundance; Praise His Holy Name !!

Last year we shared a picture of the radish we allowed to go to seed.  Today we are harvesting those seeds and will share with you this experience.  First, here is a look at the seed pods that grew from the radish.

First we removed the pods from the dried radish plant and discarded the largest stems and stalk.

The radish seeds are small, round, hard balls which are heavier than the dried pods that encase them.  Next we need to liberate the seeds from the pods by crushing them.  With this amount of seed pod, the quickest way was to gather them up in my hands and rub back and forth.  I considered getting a meat tenderizer tool to crush them with, which I don’t think would have been a bad idea, but I had enough hand strength to crush them between my hands, or even between my fingers.

The smaller, heavier radish seeds are all inside this pile of pulverized pods.  Now we need to separate the seed from the chaff.  The easiest way I found to do this was to tip up the lid from the tote I was using as a working surface, gently work the chaff back and forth, and the round seeds would roll down the lid to the bottom.  I could pull the chaff material back to the top and continue the process, liberating more seeds.  Because the chaff is lighter than the seeds, I can now lift off seedless material from the top and set it aside.  Also, I can use a technique called winnowing to remove additional chaff material from the pile by blowing gently on it.  The lighter chaff will blow away from the top of the pile, leaving more material dense with seed below it.

Through this patient process of rolling, blowing and moving the chaff around, the vast majority of seeds collected will roll down to the bottom of the lid.  Once the seed has been separated from the chaff, the next step is to store the seeds in a cool, dry location for future use.

And this is how we can turn one or two seeds into hundreds of seeds to use in the future.  God is good.