Really Big Sunflowers and the Birds - Saving Sunflower Seeds for Human Consumption

During Summer, we are harvesting so many things in the food forest. From tomatoes and peppers to cucumbers and sweet melons, there is always something to get excited about. And, it is definitely a busy time on the homestead. Often we are so busy, we forget to harvest the sunflower seeds before birds and squirrels get them all. And, it doesn't take very long for a few birds to peck your seeds away. But not this year!

If you follow my posts, you might remember we plant lots of sunflowers in the food forest for the birds and pollinators. In my opinion, sunflowers are must haves in any garden or food forest. You can even use sunflowers to clean up toxic heavy metal contaminants and poisonous chemicals in the soil. They are being used to clean up contaminated soil in urban areas and even used to draw out radioactivity around Fukushima, Japan. I wrote about the benefits of sunflowers in a previous post. And to tell you the truth, we always try to get some funny photos with sunflowers. It's kind of a tradition on the homestead, so I look forward to the photo opportunity each year.

I will show you one of the silly photos we took this year below. You really have to know my husband to know how funny this is. The bent over sunflower looks like a shower head, so I told him to go over there and pretend to be taking a shower. I added some rain effect to the photo and there you go, a "sunshower" :-)

This year, I planted the Lemon Queen & Sunspot sunflowers. Lemon Queen averages 5' to 7' tall while Sunspot stays compact and averages 18" to 24" tall. The package says the Sunspot variety is perfect for kids because it is about the same height as small children. This is my first year growing Sunspot (a dwarf variety of sunflower), I didn't know what to expect except to trust the description on the seed package. I was expecting a small compact plant with blossoms up to 10" wide. Well, was I wrong. I am not sure if the seeds got mixed up by the seed company or if somehow some of them are super charged, but I got a few that were much more than expected. They are gigantic sunflowers, taller than any I have ever grown and the blossoms were much larger than the Lemon Queen sunflowers.

In previous years, I have gone out for sunflower seeds only to find the birds have stolen them all. I have also been lucky enough to go out and find half of the matured seeds remaining. I saved most of the seeds for planting next year.

In the past I have eaten a few sunflower seeds from my garden, but they were not something I really thought about harvesting. I typically just save some seeds for next year's planting and let the birds have the rest (if they haven't stolen them all already). However, this year, I have so many large sunflower heads, I decided to harvest a good amount of the seeds for eating. I will be harvesting at different times to try to pin down the best time to harvest for human consumption. I will also be putting some tulle fabric around a few of the heads. The tulle worked great on the one blueberry bush I used it on this year. This should help prevent seed loss to the birds.

Harvesting sunflower seeds are easy. The timing of the harvest is the hardest part. If you harvest too early, the seeds are not yet fully matured and there would only be a small amount of meat in the center of the seed for eating. Wait too long, and the tender seeds will be too dry to roast. Don't wait until you noticed birds pecking at the sunflower head. If you wait til then, birds and squirrels would have taken all the seeds and left you with nothing.

When to Harvest Sunflowers

If you read online, you are supposed to wait til the back of the seed head is dried and brown to harvest the matured seeds. However, in my experience, if I wait til it turns brown and dry, I would have no seeds left on the other side. We have a lot of birds on our property. I learned my lessons the last few years, so I harvested a couple of my sunflower seed heads earlier this year. I know the seeds are mature because the yellow petals have dried and fallen, the green base of the head has turned yellow and the tall stalk is bent over, and the seed coats are black and white striped. These are viable seeds for next year's planting, but are they good eating? I cracked open a few seeds last night. They taste good, but I think they might develop more meat inside the seeds if I let the seed heads go a little bit longer.

I must pay close attention to the remaining sunflower seed heads. It will be a war with the birds to see who gets to the seeds first. That is, unless the tulle works. Don't give me wrong, I always share with the birds, but they never seem to reciprocate and I am tired of their greediness (lol).

Have you harvested sunflower seeds for eating? How do you determine the best harvest time? Please share your experience, I would love to hear from you.

All photos come from my food forest
Photo copyright: @thelaundrylady

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