Advice for cleaning palm fruit for seed collection

[Tracy]

I am curious if anyone has any shortcuts for cleaning the fruit to get seeds of some of the smaller seeds.  In the past, I have done it in a vary manually intensive way.  First I squeeze the fruit to get the bulk of the flesh off and get the seed inside to pop out.  Since there is inevitably some flesh sticking to it, I then put them in a metal sieve and submerse in water and use a brush to try to get the remaining flesh off.  Final step is a short soak the seeds in some hydrogen peroxide for 10 or 15 minutes.   So what shortcuts do you have that seem to work well for you.  

I have the seeds below that I pulled off an inflorescence on one of my Dypsis prestoniana,  I removed it in steps as it was quite large, so this is just one branch of the inflorescence in the photo below.  I was getting tired of cleaning the dropped seeds from a cycad planted immediately below it and about half of the inflorescence had already turned completely brown and was brittle dry.  I popped a bunch of the seeds out and just left them in the soil below the palm to see if I get any sprouts.  Now I will just have to be careful when weeding the Washingtonia sprouts that pop up from my neighbor's palm that spreads seeds all over my garden.  I don't want to confuse them with seedlings from any volunteers of species from my palms.

[Silas_Sancona]

9 minutes ago, Tracy said:

I am curious if anyone has any shortcuts for cleaning the fruit to get seeds of some of the smaller seeds.  In the past, I have done it in a vary manually intensive way.  First I squeeze the fruit to get the bulk of the flesh off and get the seed inside to pop out.  Since there is inevitably some flesh sticking to it, I then put them in a metal sieve and submerse in water and use a brush to try to get the remaining flesh off.  Final step is a short soak the seeds in some hydrogen peroxide for 10 or 15 minutes.   So what shortcuts do you have that seem to work well for you.  

I have the seeds below that I pulled off an inflorescence on one of my Dypsis prestoniana,  I removed it in steps as it was quite large, so this is just one branch of the inflorescence in the photo below.  I was getting tired of cleaning the dropped seeds from a cycad planted immediately below it and about half of the inflorescence had already turned completely brown and was brittle dry.  I popped a bunch of the seeds out and just left them in the soil below the palm to see if I get any sprouts.  Now I will just have to be careful when weeding the Washingtonia sprouts that pop up from my neighbor's palm that spreads seeds all over my garden.  I don't want to confuse them with seedlings from any volunteers of species from my palms.

Didn't someone here demonstrate using something like a Paint Mixer attachment for such a purpose sometime ago?..  Seemed like a pretty simple method for cleaning seed, large volumes esp..

[D. Morrowii]

I’ve never tried it but I here you can use a rock tumbler with little bit of pea gravel in it. You could also put some sharp gravel in a canvas or fabric bag with the seeds and adjust how full the bag is. Then toss it in your cloths dryer without heat and see how that works. A small concrete mixer would probably do good job too.
However, I have no first hand experience and have only done it manually with a scraper or small screwdriver. I have thought about using some mechanical method though. 

[Scott W]

I use a heavy duty wire wheel attached to my cordless drill.  Works pretty good, but still takes some time.  I've also used a paint mixer attached to my drill, but I noted for thinner shelled seeds it would crack them.

@ErikSJI posted pics some years ago of a setup he used for cleaning thousands of mule seed at a time. 

[Tracy]

22 minutes ago, Scott W said:

I use a heavy duty wire wheel attached to my cordless drill. 

I recently started using this method for cleaning cycad seeds (thank you for the recommendation Braden).  I was a little reluctant to use it on small seeds like the Dypsis prestoniana though.  They seem a bit more fragile than the much larger seeds on an Encephalartos.

[Scott W]

1 hour ago, Tracy said:

I recently started using this method for cleaning cycad seeds (thank you for the recommendation Braden).  I was a little reluctant to use it on small seeds like the Dypsis prestoniana though.  They seem a bit more fragile than the much larger seeds on an Encephalartos.

They make different grades of wire wheels, so maybe a softer bristle might work better, and maybe on a slower speed.

[Tracy]

3 hours ago, Scott W said:

They make different grades of wire wheels,

Thanks for that tip.  I got mine at a big box, and I didn't really see many options on bristle stiffness.  I'll have to look closer or ask for help.  I ended up using my manual method to clean a little over 100 seeds this afternoon from the Dypsis batch in my original photo post. 

[Darold Petty]

Tracy,  I use the standard wire wheel brush and cordless drill for small Chamaedorea seeds, no problem.  Put about 4 inches of water in a 5-gallon plastic bucket, tip the bucket at an angle and keep the wheel edge at the corner of the bucket wall and bottom,  rotate both directions,  pour off most of the water and epicarp matter carefully as the seeds remain at the bottom, repeat several times.   I would have no reservations about Dypsis seeds.