Sunflowers

[Andy Carson]

I grew an acre of sunflowers this year primarily as a protein supplement for my chickens. I also wanted to have a crop that I could cultivate to work on some perineal grasses that were in the field. Overall, I am happy with how they produced. I quickly filled up the bin I made for them, then I realized that I am working with average yields from places like north dakota, etc where they grow sunflowers more. In western PA, if you control the weeds, you get more. I have many heads that are 18-20 inches across! The stalks, too, got to be almost 3 inches across and you have to swing a machette hard to cut them down. Anyway, I thought I would do a general review of what I llike and don’t like about them for general consideration.

What I like:
Great yields
Light nutrient user (from what I have read)
Higher protein crop, with an excelent animo acid conposition for poultry
Highly palatable all my animals (cattle, goats, chickens, geese)
Forage (leaves) are very palatable to cattle and goats
Tall (9 foot) plants provide lots of shade for weeds
Cattle love to graze the crop residue and eat dropped heads
Easy to separate into distinct parts with different feed values: heads for poultry, spent heads and stalks for mature oxen, and whole plants for calves and goats
Excellent drought resistance: powered right though this mostly dry year
Confectionary sunflowers (the kind I grew) require a good beak to get through, easy for chickens, but many small pest birds look elsewhere

Disadvantages:
The shade of the understory tends to grow different weeds rather than no weeds
Supposedly the stalks degrade better than cornstalks, this is hard to believe right now
The understory creates an environment for critters to steal sunflowers, but they tend to take the downed ones anyway
Tall and weak plants tend to blow down, I will use a shorter variety next year
Not as short of a season as I was expecting

[Kevin Cunningham]

I plant giant sunflowers in my pumpkin patch each year. I like this combo because the squash will usually cover the ground more than just the sunflowers do. You might consider that for next year, less sunflowers and more squash. Cattle and goats also love pumpkins and the seeds have worming effect. I turns out more like a “three sisters” (corn, squash, beans) planting. I tend to plant a smattering of sunflowers in amongst the pumpkins but a you could plant a more balanced ratio for the desired results. I do like growing sunflowers, the flowers are hard not to like.

[Andy Carson]

Thanks Kevin, I think I will try that next year. How do you space them?

[Anonymous]

how did you dry and store them? I love growing sunflowers in a permaculture setting because they grow everywhere and pioneer easily.

Jared

[Kevin Cunningham]

I plant the pumpkin patch with a modified corn planter that our neighbor made. This one hitches three point to the tractor and with all of the corn planting mechanism removed. He welded on a seat and big pipe to form a shoot. I drive and somebody rides and is throwing seed down the shoot. As long as they keep the timing up there are plenty of plants to choose from when we weed and thin. I just mix some sunflower seed in with the pumpkins so that they come up randomly through the patch. I usually space the pumpkin rows 5-6 feet apart and 3 feet in the row. I almost always get plenty of ground cover. You could alternate rows of sunflowers and pumpkins and it wouldn’t matter. If your plant pumpkins closer together you get more smaller pumpkins, further apart and you get bigger ones, which you may not need.

I am taking my seed off today. I select the biggest, and nicest looking flowers for seed at least 25-50 heads. My tallest flower was 10’3″. I try and get the seed off before it rains and there is some on the way this weekend. I dry the seed head in the greenhouse. The rest I leave up for the rest of October for the spooking affect, then I have to pull all of the stalks out of the field. The stalk would never break down like corn for me they are like small trees. I can then harvest the remainder of the seed. I will often put them though the combine stationary and my little All Crop does a a great job threshing them.

[Kevin Cunningham]

I plant the pumpkin patch with a modified corn planter that our neighbor made. This one hitches three point to the tractor and with all of the corn planting mechanism removed. He welded on a seat and big pipe to form a shoot. I drive and somebody rides and is throwing seed down the shoot. As long as they keep the timing up there are plenty of plants to choose from when we weed and thin. I just mix some sunflower seed in with the pumpkins so that they come up randomly through the patch. I usually space the pumpkin rows 5-6 feet apart and 3 feet in the row. I almost always get plenty of ground cover. You could alternate rows of sunflowers and pumpkins and it wouldn’t matter. If your plant pumpkins closer together you get more smaller pumpkins, further apart and you get bigger ones, which you may not need.

I am taking my seed off today. I select the biggest, and nicest looking flowers for seed at least 25-50 heads. My tallest flower was 10’3″. I try and get the seed off before it rains and there is some on the way this weekend. I dry the seed head in the greenhouse. The rest I leave up for the rest of October for the spooking affect, then I have to pull all of the stalks out of the field. The stalk would never break down like corn for me they are like small trees. I can then harvest the remainder of the seed. I will often put them though the combine stationary and my little All Crop does a a great job threshing them.

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