94% germination rate on Maule's Philadelphia Butter Lettuce! We had trouble with most of our lettuces' germ rates last year, because we were using seed saving methods that worked fine for decades for seed preservation at Roughwood, but that weren't quite good enough for seed sales. This year I followed the advice of many lettuce seed growers I met at a conference (#ocgc2016) in Oregon, and voila! We let the plants with fluffed seedheads (aka feathers) dry on sheets for a few days or a week in our greenhouse, then threshed by banging them against the sides of big buckets - only taking the seed that fell from a rough but brief pounding. From there we sifted the seeds and chaff and put them through the seed cleaning aspirator as usual. Thanks folks (including @adaptive_seeds)! #lettuceseed #seedcleaning #seedsaving #germinationrate #roughwoodseedcollection #maulesphiladelphialettuce
