How to Grow Sunflower Seeds

Hi this is Yolanda Vanveen and in this segment we're going to talk about how to grow sunflower seeds. Now sunflower seeds are so delicious, I really love them with salad or by themselves and they're really easy to grow too. And there's certain types of sunflowers that make good sunflower seeds and there's others that are just ornamental. So the first thing to do when you buy your sunflower seeds to grow, make sure and that you're buying the varieties that are edible and are great to make sunflower seeds. So when you have sunflower seeds that are edible, usually they're baked. So the sunflower seeds that you buy at the store generally you cannot start the seeds, they've been baked. So you have to make sure that if you're growing sunflowers for seeds that are edible that you get the right type of seeds. And then you want to plant them when it's 70 degrees and above outside during the day and not below 50 at night because they're really not going to do anything when it's cold outside. So you can either start them in the house in a tray or in a bag or anywhere there's moisture, the seeds will sprout and then you turn around and plant them outside immediately or you can plant them right outside when it's warm enough. And then they'll come up and grow in the summer and then they'll bloom beautifully. So when you want to save those seeds, you wait for the heads to start dropping a bit and just to the point where the seeds are just barely almost falling off if you tap it, they're starting to fall, you don't ever want to pull the seeds off because they're not ready. So at the point when the seeds are falling off, you can either hang them up and dry them and put a little piece of nylon or cloth or any type of a bag around it and the seeds will fall right into the bag or you can just put them into a paper bag and just let them dry that way. And then you can either bake them and eat them as a baked sunflower or you can save them fresh and plant them the next year. But it's really easy to grow your own sunflower seeds.