What is Winnowing?
Why you may want to try this centuries-old practice in your garden.
Most of us have vague images in our minds of the practice. Perhaps you envision a person from tribal culture tossing seeds in a shallow basket or a farmer holding seeds up high and then letting them drop into a bucket below. That's winnowing.
Winnowing is a process in which the chaff is separated from the seeds by wind or an air current.
Why do we do it?
Imagine having a bail of hay sitting in front of you and you are instructed to remove each seed by hand. One by one, you have to remove every seed. This task would take you days, maybe even a week or more.
In agricultural societies, people don’t have the hours to remove seeds individually. Before machinery could separate seeds from chaff, people needed to create a method of quick separation. This is where winnowing came in handy.
Who uses the practice?
Throughout history, agrarian cultures have used winnowing to speed up their seed separation processes and to increase their yields of seeds. Any cultures that consumed grains like rice, corn, or wheat would have benefitted from the practice.
Today, farmers and horticulturists winnow either by hand or by machine depending on the scale of their production. Small-scale gardeners can do this easily with their hands and the wind (or some form of air circulation). While the process is most associated with separating grains, it can be done on other types of plants including flowers.
How to winnow:
Sow your seeds. Cultivate your plants. Thresh your crop. Winnow the seeds. Store or consume your seeds.
Most of us are familiar with the sowing, cultivation, and storage aspects of gardening. But threshing and winnowing may be new concepts.
Threshing is when the crop is shaken or is hit against the ground or a table. This loosens the seeds from the chaff. To thresh, make sure the crop is completely dried out. Then hit it off a workbench, rock, or the ground. If the crop is small, you can rub it between your palms. This is the method I used to separate my salvia seeds from the plant.
Once threshed, you should have a pile of seeds and chaff. Now you can winnow. Drop the seeds from your hand into a bucket — a distance of 3 feet/1 meter is ideal. The wind will take the light chaff and the heavier seeds will fall downwards.
Make sure there is some wind, but not too much or your seeds may be taken! You could also toss the seeds in a shallow basket or winnowing fan (this takes a bit of practice).
Try it out for yourself!
Now that you know the basics, give it a go! It takes a little practice to become good at it, but it’s well worth it. It is especially useful for plants with many seeds or tiny seeds. It also makes for a good physics lesson for young ones.
Happy winnowing!
