Fresh lettuce has so much flavor! I grew some Bibb Buttercrunch lettuce from some free seeds. I really liked the taste and I want to grow it again, so I let it bolt, or go to seed.

The problem with lettuce seeds is that they are small and often stick to remnants of the flower and fluff.

One way to save the seeds is to wait and let the stalks dry out, then crinkle the seed heads in your hands to release the seeds.

I didn’t want to wait.

I had a crazy idea.

What if I stuck the seed heads in my Ninja (food processor) for a bit??

So I tried it.

It separated the chaff from the seeds quite well! I gently blew the chaff off the top and ta da! I was a little afraid that I would end up with lettuce seed puree but I didn’t. 🙂

Look at that-enough lettuce seeds to grow salad for all my neighbors. And their rabbits.

My brain kept thinking.

If this could be done with lettuce seeds, I wondered, what about those tough seedpods from my daikon radishes and broccoli?

It worked quite well for the daikon radishes. Just a second or two of the food processor and the seed pods had released the seeds.

Separating broccoli seeds was a snap.

I’m so excited about free seeds! I have an entire post on how I get free seeds, and saving seeds from your own garden is one of the ways to get them. I also have a post with more money-saving garden tips.

So what do you think of this method of saving lettuce seeds? Or do you think that this method is crazy?  Do you know of anyone else who saves seeds this way? If so, I’d love to hear about it!