Harvesting Sunflower Seeds!
Can you believe I've never grown a sunflower?! I suppose I must've as a child, but it can't have been a spectacular success given I can't remember it. This year, however, with hopes of growing some cutting flowers for the house, as well as producing some of my own seeds, I opted for a lovely variety called 'Helios'.
Helios was carefully chosen for two main reasons; it's a dwarf variety, and it's multi-stemmed. I hope to sell a few flowers on my garden gate stall yet I don't have the room for thousands of single-headed sunflowers. Helios, therefore, is ideal - it stays low enough for me to enjoy and provides multiple buds to cut and harvest.
Saving Seeds
Well I did sell a few flowers and I did cut a few for my personal use, but now they're going over it's all about seed saving. Luckily, it's pretty darn easy and simply requires the head to be cut, any spent flowers to be brushed away and then for the entire bud to be left in a cool, dry place to completely dry out. Sunflowers that have been totally dried will start to curl back on themselves, all but thrusting the seeds out - a biological mechanism, perhaps, to help scatter seeds.
I've got four main reasons for saving all these precious seeds;
- More Sunflowers in 2018 - Yes! Now I've grown them, I want it to be a regular thing.
- Seeds to Eat - I'd love to actually add some home-grown sunflower seeds to the snack jar.
- Seeds for the Birds - Along with feeding wild birds I also keep a variety of parakeets. These are ideal for them!
- Micro-greens - With the winter reducing outside growing, I want to have a go at a few microgreens. Hopefully, I can use my homegrown sunflower seeds for this.
Over the coming weeks I'll but cutting off and drying out all of the spent flowers....of which there are still many. So I should get a great harvest! I'm excited to see how they do.
You and me both! Been cutting the heads off for last week and LOVIN' it!
Next year planning more too
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I can't believe I haven't done it before!
Lol...me too
Anxious for them to continue drying so we can snack on them
I can't wait to taste those first few. Nothing like homegrown!
Those are some pretty sunflowers. Do you have to roast the seeds? Please do a post as you process them for the snack jar!
I honestly don't know! I'm sure you can probably just eat them after washing? I need to look all of this up!
Definitely look it up. I'd hate for all that work to be for naught.
We loooveee going to sunflower fields. Sunflowers are beautiful. But we have only planted them ourselves, once! 😂😂 And they were planted in pots on our apartment balcony 😂😂
We planned to plant them next year too
😀
Definitely plant them next year. They're such cheery flowers. :D
We should flood steemit next year with sunflowers then @brimwoodfarm 😁
That sounds like a plan! And have a competition of sorts too. That would be fun. :D
That's the spirit 👍👍👍
lovely pictures! yum yum! also on the super healthy list!
melissa
Thanks Melissa :D
Every time I try to purposely grow sunflowers, they don't germinate, but accidental ones grow from the chook feed! I'd like to grow more though. You've inspired me to try again! My rabbits also love sunflowers.
Please do! Honestly, I'd never really thought about it until this year, but I'll be definitely doing it again.