Hi,
When seeds are ripe, they are chopped and dried within the plants slowly but steadily, it's quite critical to do this part right. Too moist and seeds will want to crack and germ, but you don't want to over dry to a crisp either.
So they get put on a drying shelf, then after 5-6 days, I bust up the flowers, it's a gradual step to make the separation process easier. They will go back on to a dry shelf in brown paper for a couple more days and then over a screen to remove the plant material, repeated a few times we get left with just the seeds.
Then there a few sorting stages which depending on workload can take a couple of weeks. This is probably one month from being cut, where they can then be bagged with a piece of brown paper.
After a month of refrigeration germination rates are tested and at this point we're usually above the 90% mark and stock can go out.
Because we don't produce in large batches refrigeration alone is fine for the time span we need before a variety needs to be reproduced.
With sts we spray from when they show sex - 15 days approx until 30 days, 5 treatments on average and we start to be able to procure pollen from days 35-40 on average. Of course this does depend on the strain in question and can vary.
Cheers Mitch
