Grow and Eat your own Sunflower seeds

It's fun and easy!

So you like sunflower seeds and you have a garden. Why not grow your own Sunflowers and harvest the seeds!! It's easy and if you choose one of the large varieties you get a ton of seeds per flower.

Planting the seeds

Buy some seeds. I go for the American giant which can grow easily to ten or twelve feet and has a big head that gives plenty of seeds come harvest time.

So you got your seeds, sow them in some small pots, I start mine off in the house on a warm windowsill. I am not going to go into detailed instruction on this because sunflower seeds are eeeeeaaaasy to germinate.

Within a couple of weeks they should have started to grow. Quickly transfer them into bigger pots. Then when about a foot high I usually stick mine into a final massive one like this. They don't really need a cane but in Scotland you don't take any chances with our shrieking winds.

Or you can also transplant then straight into the ground. If so you should allow at least a foot between plants.

Then you let them grow

random family included for height comparison

And grow

more random family

You get the idea, then they flower.

The flower is the yellow one on the right

So now we get to the fun bit!!

Harvesting the seeds

So you have your big Sunflowers!! They last a couple of weeks then they start to droop and also lose some petals. Once they have lost just over half their petals or are drooping alarmingly it's time to chop em off.

Cut the flower and about a foot of stalk off. Then hang this somewhere dry for a couple of weeks

After a couple of weeks they should be nice and dry. Time to pluck the seeds out!!

Get your sunflower head and run your thumb briskly over the outside of the head as below.

Start from the outside and work your way in

Eventually you will have a big pile of sunflower seeds!! Tada!!

Eat them whilst fresh or leave them to dry so that they keep for ages the choice is yours!!