We harvest upwards of 150 hectares a year and were one of the first companies to see the value of British Native Origin Seed (BNOS) for sensitive landscape restoration. Heritage Seeds have been harvesting from heathland and grassland communities since the mid-eighties, our first contract was an oil pipe-line crossing several SSSIs in Dorset. We started using adapted vacuum machines and quicky abandoned this approach to develop low impact brush harvesters.
The Donor Site
The most valuable communities are normally steeply sloping or have poor access, our low weight machines avoid compaction and tyre damage . We have developed the machinery to allow us to rouge the crop of noxious weeds as we harvest. This innovation allow us to exclude seed of undesirable species (Docks, Thistle, Ragwort) as we encounter them, it makes possible the harvesting of sites with low densities of these problematic species and still retain a clean sample . This innovation allows many more sites to be eligible for seed collection without including any damaging or noxious species.
Collecting the Seed
We have developed two light, low impact machines, both with hydraulically adjustable headers, these allow us to follow contours and changes in sward height whilst avoiding ant communities and scrub that are common in most sites. Each machine has a curtain to exclude invertebrates.
Cooling and Drying
Collected material is cooled and dried quickly on the day it is collected, it is laid out under shaded polythene and turned by hand before being threshed. The temperature and moisture content in the first 48 hour period following harvesting is crucial to the viability of the seed.
Threshing
Once dry, the material is threshed using a closed loop system, this makes sure we keep all of the seed collected
Cleaning and Storage
The seed is cleaned through several stages and refrigerated to retain viability. The seed is fractioned during the cleaning process, this allows us to balance out or exclude any over represented species that may dominate the recipient site. The seed is cleaned through several stages and refrigerated to retain viability.
Seed for civil engineering projects such as pipeline restoration benefit from these controlled conditions and this greatly improves the storage live and viability of harvested seed
Analysis
The representation of species from each lot of clean seed is recorded. This helps monitoring the development of each site and economic sowing of the seed.