Can i eat the seeds from my mammoth sunflowers and when are they ready to be harvested please help ?

Question

this is my first year planting sunflowers so i don't have much knowledge of them . i would also like to know if i can plants some of the seeds i harvest to grow the mammoth flowers again next year. Very confused and needing a lot of help is there anyone out there with the information i need?

Answer 1

First of all, of course you can eat them!

For my job I do this annually. Once our sunflowers have bloomed (which, in our case, we have hand pollinated them) we drape each composite flowerhead in a cloth bag. (Note: by composite head, I mean the entire flowerhead, as sunflower heads are really a collection of disc and ray flowers.) The material of the bag is kind of a cross between cheesecloth and the material that is used for interfacing when you sew (which is kind of a loosely woven mess). No matter what kind of material you use, make sure that it is lightweight and is loose woven so dew and precipitation is able to quickly dry.

The top of the bag is tied around the stem. As the seeds mature, those that finish first drop into the bag. We go along daily and collect these seeds just to make sure that they don't get infected by some kind of bug or get damp when it is dewy the next morning.

The method works very well -- we always have at least 97% filled out seeds.

Answer 2

Yes, you can do both. Wait till the plant starts to die , cut the top off remove seeds. Put a few seeds up in a cool dry place for next year.  

Answer 3

Sunflower seeds are edible...pain in the neck to get them from hulls, but edible. AS for growing from this year's seeds, probalby ok, but you may have hybrid seeds now if they were fertilized by other sunflower pollen! You may not get what you expect next year. Seeds are cheap, just buy new ones to be sure of what you get. By the way, you may want to toast those seeds in an oven before you eat them. Goldwing