# planting striped sunflower seeds



## moonwolf (Sep 20, 2004)

Will the striped sunflower seeds that you buy in the feed store for bird seed grow to produce big blossoms to be able to harvest the same sunflower seeds? :shrug: I'm assuming the striped bird seed, or the black oil sunflower birds seeds are not hybrid.


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## ceresone (Oct 7, 2005)

Mine grow excellent.


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## suburbanite (Jul 27, 2006)

moonwolf said:


> Will the striped sunflower seeds that you buy in the feed store for bird seed grow to produce big blossoms to be able to harvest the same sunflower seeds? :shrug: I'm assuming the striped bird seed, or the black oil sunflower birds seeds are not hybrid.


Yes. As a result of my renter's having kept a bird feeder, after I returned home and moved back into my house, I had sunflowers popping up unexpectedly all over the yard for about 3 of the subsequent springs.


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## suburbanite (Jul 27, 2006)

Also, I planted two kinds of sunflowers from Renee's Garden seeds last year--Snack Seed and Sunzilla. The latter is grown for its tallness, as a novelty, and is essentially an oil-seed sunflower.

I grew the Sunzillas as an attempt to keep the critters out of the Snack Seed sunflowers, and much to my surprise--it worked! The birds went after them preferentially, and I had zero predation on my confectionary sunflowers (mixed planting, 50% of each type).

They attracted a lot of leaf-cutter bees, if you're interested in alternative pollenators.


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## moonwolf (Sep 20, 2004)

suburbanite said:


> Yes. As a result of my renter's having kept a bird feeder, after I returned home and moved back into my house, I had sunflowers popping up unexpectedly all over the yard for about 3 of the subsequent springs.


cool.  Were they tall sunflowers that bore lots of seeds? Stiped or black seed??? :shrug:


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## ceresone (Oct 7, 2005)

You know, just as a "aside", I learned a few years ago, to grow sunflowers near my garden, I didnt have a worm in my garden that year--bird patrol!


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## suburbanite (Jul 27, 2006)

The volunteer sunflowers were about 3 to 4 feet high, probably had a lot of seeds (I let them grow for the birds not me so I didn't harvest seeds to know) and I think they were black seeded. Most of them bore more than one flower per stalk, typically 4 or 5, but they were short-stemmed between main stalk and secondary flowers, so you couldn't use them easily for cut flowers, though they did make a sort of standing bouquet in the yard.

A few of them that landed on poor soil only grew a couple of feet tall and had only a couple of flowers--I cut those for table decoration, even though they did drop pollen. The tabletop is glass so the pollen was easy to wipe up.


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## moonwolf (Sep 20, 2004)

I figure to plant a fairly large plot only for sunflowers and don't want to spend the bucks. I can get a 50 lb. bag of sunflower seed for just a few dollars and plant up what I'd use to grow and feed the rest to birds. The idea is to have a harvest of seed for bird feed (poultry). :shrug:


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## suburbanite (Jul 27, 2006)

That should work fine Moonwolf.


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## moonwolf (Sep 20, 2004)

suburbanite said:
 

> That should work fine Moonwolf.


I think I'll try the following. 
Buy a bag of striped seeds and a bag of black oil sunflower seeds. 
I'll alternate the seed plantings and see how that grows and what I end up with. Since this is an experimental plot, and I'll be also doing it in the mulch/no till method. The stalks come in handy for stacking the bottom layer of a larger aerobic composting system after harvest. 
I think I'll simply plant up sunflowers also where I usually had my bird feeders and have 'living bird feeders' for late summer as the birds are attracted to feed on that also.


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## suburbanite (Jul 27, 2006)

Keep the feeders up though for the time before the sunflowers are ready.


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## emiliozapata (Oct 21, 2004)

i also wondered about growing the sunflowers for poultry feed and the stalks when green i understand to be excellent feed for milking animals goats and cows, i let siome stalks go and dry and cut them down they were woody and about 1 1/2 inch thick when i get enough i am going to try to build something out of them


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## sammyd (Mar 11, 2007)

The stalks wouldn't nourish anything that's milking and good luck getting anything else to eat them. Even my always hungry beefer heifer wouldn't go for them. But the heads are great for any animal. I fed them to my goats, chickens, bunnies and cows. 
I just throw a head or 2 in the coop and the girls peck it right up. 
Last year I planted a couple of long rows. I used to stand outside and just be amazed at how high they grew. I bought every pack of grey striped I could find at 2 local dollar tree stores for 10c a pack.


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## elkhound (May 30, 2006)

moonwolf...getting the big bags of seed is far cheaper than buying "seed".i have a bag for my experiment's also.plus a few drums to store them in after drying out.i hope to grow a bunch of seed for the future to feed the chickens and other animals.i am also trying a few handsfull of sorghrum for the seed heads.i cant wait to see one of your meadows of flowers.how big of a place are you going to palnt??are you going to palnt 50# bag of both varities??


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## moonwolf (Sep 20, 2004)

elkhound said:


> moonwolf...getting the big bags of seed is far cheaper than buying "seed".i have a bag for my experiment's also.plus a few drums to store them in after drying out.i hope to grow a bunch of seed for the future to feed the chickens and other animals.i am also trying a few handsfull of sorghrum for the seed heads.i cant wait to see one of your meadows of flowers.how big of a place are you going to palnt??are you going to palnt 50# bag of both varities??


not sure yet, but it woudln't be out of the possibility for me to try and plant 50# of each sunflower. Depends on how much I can work up the place to plant that.


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## thechickenladyx (Jul 5, 2006)

i planted a field of sunflower seeds last year. right from the bird food bag. as far as chicken feed, forget it. the wild birds ate everything. but it was cool watching that process too.

jesse


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## Windy in Kansas (Jun 16, 2002)

May I ask why you wish to assume that the sunflower seed are not a hybrid variety?

I would imagine that the seeds have been grown by farmers and therefore probably ARE hybrid in order to help control disease, insect pests, increase yield, etc. After all, hybrids generally do make better plants/crops. Yes, I would probably assume they are as farmers are in the game to make a profit.

Should you not plant them? Go right ahead they should still produce a nice crop for you. You may not wish to save seed and plant for more than a year or so however in case they revert to lineage lines of less desirable traits.

Just my opinion, and I'm of the opinion that hybrids are usually better for any number of reasons.


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## moonwolf (Sep 20, 2004)

WIK,
good point about the hybrid. It's not going to matter to me personally whether the seed is hybrid or open pollinated. If it grows a seed head with edible seeds for birds, that's the only goal of interest to me without saving seeds. If it works our okay, I'll buy another bag next year and plant it the same.


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## Bearfootfarm (Jul 13, 2006)

I plant bags of mixed bird seed around the edges of some of my fields I get an interesting mix of sunflowers and millet, and the birds and deer love it.


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## suburbanite (Jul 27, 2006)

Millet is to birds what chocolate chip cookies are to humans.

It is a wonder to me that the species doesn't vanish from the planet, the way birds like to chow down on the seeds!


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