Finished a recent seed run on a particularly frosty seed-momma.
Was thinking “dry-ice-sift”to recover the resiny goodness and easily free the beans from their flowers.
I found one post from 2012 on another site where someone had tried this and tested the results, reportedly germinating about 100-seeds successfully from the dry-iced batch.
Is this a pretty common method for seed shucking? Seems to make sense if it doesn’t compromise the seeds.
Anyone here do this? What are the thoughts on seed viability?
I’ll take a stab here buddy. I am not a licensed seed shuck-er, just a bud who has painted a few branches and de-seeded brick weed and reggie back in the day.
The only time I have tried dry ice sift was over 10 years ago when I (pre-growing days) acquired some frosty Orange Crush trim from an older hippie friend. I did the bucket and pantyhose thing over a glass table top and thought it was as cool as shit to yield so much kief so easily and quickly.
For starters, this is my first time hearing of this method, not to discount it right off the bat. Also, If your flowers had any sort of density to them, you would certainly not be breaking every seed free, and without a link to your example, I would suggest that for most strains, 100 seeds would be a laughably low number to recover. Its not uncommon for medium sized plants to produce 10,000 seeds, or 100x more than that example.
I don’t really see this being terribly damaging to the seeds though.
By the time you chop your materiel into pieces that would allow for decent percentage of the seeds to be recoverable, I don’t think it would be much more efficient than getting the flowers super dry and just using dry sift screens.
I have found seedlings in the compost after ice water hash but the dry ice turns the material into fine crushed biomass. The seeds would be damaged, at least in the runs I’ve done.
I would think, when following general activity of water below freezing, that the flower and seed would have to be dry to allow all seeds to retain viability, because else the water crystals may damage the seeds. Though in the short amount of total freeze time and fast freezing that dry ice allows it may not in fact be able to grow ice crystals, so perhaps there will be no viability loss even when fresh material is used, so long as it is never placed in a regular freezer before it is dried.
That said, I’ve used dry ice for hash production, but have not recovered seeds from them AFAICR. Usually I use sugar leaf for hash and maybe some popcorn, so generally speaking it’s not really likely I encounter seeds in the post-sift greens.
I put material in a jar w/o doing anything to.
Crushed dry ice on top, roll it around to get as much of the surface area in contact w/the dry ice as possible and let it sit for a few minutes. add larger pieces of dry ice and close the jar w/the screen top. Now shake the thr jar. The shaking of the frozen material w/the ice breaks the material down into fine shake. The seeds are damaged by the ice and rhe jar. I have only used my bags for dry ice once and there were not seeds to contend with.
The space used depends on the material I have to run. I have a lid that allows for another jar to fit on top so that it is mess free. If I have a large amount of material I use a larger area. I can cover the entire table and then come back w/the next run and do it the same way w/each additional run of the same material. As i shake i am slowly moving top to bottom right to left to be able to collect various degrees of purity.
Hey @Longtooth . I just finished listening to the Pot Cast featuring John, from Snowhigh Seeds. He claims thats the way he harvest most of his seeds. He says he knocks the trichs off his seeded flower using dry ice, then sifts the seed from the left overs. He said he does this with both fresh and dried flower and the seed remains viable. I have no experience in the matter, just passing the info along so you can give it a listen If your inclined.
I think I’ll give this a try. Got a few ounces of seeded and tired of finger hash from shucking seeds. I’ve ran several batches of dry ice through my bags. I do it in small batches with half a dozen small pieces of dry ice, shake it for 20 seconds and dump the working bag into a bucket, bud and ice. That 70 & 90 bag give me some great hash. I dump all the used back in for one last shake but it’s never as good as that first time through but what’a do?
It’s certainly a “dry” process. A buddy said he preferred it the 'ol ice/water and no tap. Said he could taste the chemicals. Anyway the seeds would remain dry but cold until retrieved, which should be done after the co2 dissipates. I doubt it would hurt the seeds. Interesting experiment.
And NOW you know why germination rates are so low on John’s stuff. When you freeze the seeds some no longer will be viable.
It was easy to collect seeds for John but not so easy for you to germinate those. He made plenty of money and you got very few plants from his results.
Seems a little greedy to me.
