After our seed saving meeting last month, I looked into the seed drying desiccant that Cory Dombrowski of Sakata Seed had mentioned. I was so intrigued by what I learned that I bought some and have extra to sell if you are interested. While they were far from cheap, we are always looking for something that will make gardening easier in our hot and humid environment here in South Florida.
Here is what I learned:
These beads absorb water from freshly harvested seeds. They are not to be stored with the seed long term, instead they do the initial DRYING of the seeds. The beads can be dried out in your home oven and reused indefinitely. After baking the beads and cooling them, just add beads and seed to a glass jar and close the lid. These beads can TOUCH the seeds unlike flower-drying desiccant. These beads dry FRESHLY HARVESTED seeds unlike other desiccants.
I asked for a worst case scenario on weight of seeds to weight of beads and it turns out to be 1 to 1. After the seeds have dried, the beads are removed and the seed can be stored long-term as you wish (that's a whole post in itself). The above photo shows beads with rice.
Afterthought: these will keep my spices nicely too!
