Bought a small round orange rough skinned pumkin at the farmers market...grown by a local school's permaculture garden. It is the kind that the sKin is eaten as well as flesh and was very easy to cut. Question Drying the seeds for next year....do you wash away the stringy stuff before drying or just dry all together and any idea on the life of the dried seeds. Q2....roasting the seeds...anyone done this...ideas welcome. cheers Cathy
I don't wash mine I just pull the pulp from the seeds, make sure you dry them really well before sealing them up, I lost a large batch of my best pumpkin seeds to mold. If you did wash them I would hand dry them straight away. When Bec roasts them see just puts them under the grill or in the oven in a dry tray, but keep an eye on them and the will burn really quickly.
g'day cathy, yes they need to be realy dry before storing, we don't store ours until they have been drying for at least a couple of weeks and then store them in the middle of a hot dry day. we do wash the pulp off but like baz does i don't know how necessary that is. we did have some go mouldy when we tried drying them and packing them too early through a wet period, but we gave them a soak in some bleach water to stop the fungi growth then re-dried and packed they all germinated so would suggest they are a pretty tough seed. we only ever grew pumpkins as volunteers in the end so cut out the need to seed save, so if they can last though the rotting process and still germinate that's not bad hey, after all we reckon nature doens't dry and store seed does it? hey :lol: len 8)
Im a beleiver in the slow drying process, as normally the best one as its as nature does.it ont matter about any daggy bits as long as their thoroughly dry it should work perfectly.only thing is most seed dont last that long so should be sown early as possible to save spoiling Tezza
drying pumpkin seeds I usually separate them and lie flat on the window sill for a couple of weeks on paper towel. Works fine. For roasting the seeds I've found that Turks turban are the best. I usually throw them into the roast about 1/2 hr before everything else will be ready. If they go into a good olive oil and stir in some good curry paste they are fantastic, nice and crunchy and the whole lot is edible. Some pumpkin seeds of tasty pumpkins don't have such great seeds such as Jarradale, Qld blue.
Slightly off-topic. This article ( https://www.soilandhealth.org/06clipfile/MuesliSml.pdf ) about meusli talks about pumpkin seeds in the last paragraph and asks whether the zinc, that they are known so well for, is even available to you without 6-8 hours soaking. Mike
