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seeds and 'chaff'

15 years ago

Do you ever wonder if the seeds will do better if sown with the "chaff?" I wonder if there are some nutrients or some properties to help the seed, as in nature, the chaff falls too.

In any case, while collecting seeds today, some came with alot of chaff. Is there a big downside to sprinkling the seed with the chaff when winter sowing?

Laurie

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Comments (3)

roflol
15 years ago
The only downside I can think of is evenness of distribution of the seeds when planting... if you can't see the seeds themselves in the chaff (like some Rudbeckia, for instance), you can't see where the seed is going when you're planting it, so you may end up sprinkling seed all in one place and chaff everywhere else.

Other than that, I don't see a problem with it. If it's for your own use, I wouldn't bother dechaffing a thing.

Terri :]
pyrgal
15 years ago
When I harvest my zinnia I just take the whole dried flower heads and put them in a bag. The next spring I take out handfuls of seed w/chaff and sprinkle it in the vegetalble garden in a wide row planting. It's always great.
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Chafe is fine IF there are actually viable seeds in there. The problem is, if the person has been careless about cleaning the seeds, then have they also been careless about when they collected them? I received a Monarda seedhead in a trade last year, which was supposed to be from a white M. fistulosa, and I tore that sucker apart and found maybe 5 seeds (which didn't sprout). I also received Aster novae-angliae once which appeared to be a bag of fluffy chafe (it was like where were the seeds???). I sowed the chafe, and did get 1 healthy sprout. By no means do I expect perfectly clean seeds, especially with Asters which are pretty tedious to clean. But these seeds were ridiculous.
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medontdo
15 years ago
since i've gotten into garden web, i've wondered that to. we've been out collecting seeds, well in our case, the kids and i don't know what they are, so we collect the whole head. and when i send them i send the whole head. but that is because i don't want anyone to lose out on what i don't know about. i do know its not posionous. LOL but out in the open they do really well, and when we try to "propagate" them we fail sometimes, so it just made me wonder. i believe i read somewhere about needing a carrying thing on some seeds why not another property on others? just me overthinking things LOL ~Medo

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