How to Harvest Sunflower Seeds Without Feeding the Wildlife

Sunflowers are exquisite and striking, tall flowers that turn their faces toward the sun as their name suggests. More than just beautiful, they are great for the home garden because they also attract pollinators and provide an edible crop of seeds for roasting or producing oil.

Sunflowers are very easy to save seeds from, but certain tips will help you save more seeds and have greater success so you can plant, grow, eat, and have enough to replant next year!

In this blog post, you’ll learn the stages of sunflower development, when to harvest sunflower seeds, and how to harvest sunflower seeds a far better way that provides almost a 100% success rate without feeding the wildlife.

By The Seeds You Save

This post on how to harvest sunflower seeds is a continuation of our series on seed saving, which includes great tutorials on saving tomato seeds, saving lettuce seeds, saving bean seeds, and many more.

Understanding the different types of seeds (GMO, hybrid, organic, and heirloom) and learning how to harvest and save heirloom vegetable seeds is a great way to create a continuous supply of your garden favorites so you can grow bigger!

Stages of Sunflower Development

Believe it or not, a sunflower is not a flower but a grouping of hundreds of flowers! The pedals that grow around the sunflower head are called pseudo petals, or fake petals.

The true flower petals are the tiny petals that grow in the center of a sunflower head. The true petals will begin to drop off once they are fully pollinated. When they start to drop off, each of those flowers will produce an individual sunflower seed.

A sunflower goes through many different phases of development. These include:

• Vegetative Phase - The sunflower has true leaves, is growing, and forms green buds.

• Blooming Phase - Buds bloom in all their splendor. The plant has a nice, full sunflower head with beautiful pseudo petals.

• Greening Phase - In this phase, the plant receives a lot of nutrients and water. The small true flowers start blooming, starting with the outside edges first.

• Yellowing Phase - After pollination, the petals start to drop off, the seeds mature and store up oil, and the plant goes through colorization, where the stem begins to harden off and hollow. Water stops flowing to the flowers, which allows the seeds to start drying.

• Browning Phase - The entire stem turns brown and may crimp.

When to Harvest Sunflower Seeds

The best time to harvest sunflower seeds is just before the browning phase begins! When it's time to harvest, the back of the sunflower head will turn yellow. When it's completely yellow, you know that the seeds are ripe and fully mature.

It is common for people to simply let their sunflowers go through all the phases, die, and let the seeds dry out on the plant. It is not wrong if you do that, but there is a better way!

The disadvantage of letting sunflower seeds dry on the plant is that many of the seeds will become food for birds in the garden and animals in the garden. You may still get some viable seeds, but most of the seeds left by animals are interior seeds, which will have a higher moisture content, may not be fully formed, and are less viable.

How to Harvest Sunflower Seeds

1. Cut - When the seeds are fully mature, use hand pruners to cut the stems below the sunflower heads to remove them from the plant.

2. Trim - Remove leaves and shorten the stem using hand pruners.

3. Peel - Sunflowers harbor a lot of critters like ants, beetles, earwigs, and spiders. Pull the first 1 or 2 layers of pseudo petals off of the back of the sunflower head to prevent taking all those bugs indoors. (There are 2 or 3 layers of these on most sunflowers.)

4. Shake - Shake the sunflower head or tap it on something to dislodge any remaining bugs that may be hiding in it.

5. Remove Petals - Using just your fingers, gently rub off the flower petals.

6. Dry - Take the sunflower heads indoors and let them dry for about 2 weeks.

7. Harvest - Use your fingers to pop the seeds out. They should come out easily.

Now you can roast the seeds, plant them, or save them for future planting.

Sunflower Seed Saving

I strongly encourage everyone to save seeds, whether you’re growing organically or not. Saving seeds provides a more secure seed source and preserves biodiversity.

Take a portion of your harvested seeds and save them to replant. You can protect the quality and viability of your seeds by using good seed storage containers like these seed saver packets and plastic storage cases.

Roasting & Eating Sunflower Seeds

Certain sunflowers produce seeds that are better than others for eating but all sunflower seeds are edible, even from ornamental sunflowers! You can eat them raw or roasted, or press out the oil.