A Seed Saver's Garden

[Decoy1]

In my experience sunflowers have been one of the trickier seeds to save because the plant tissue on the back of the seed head holds a lot of water, and can be difficult to dry down. If you decide to try saving sunflower seeds take measures to quickly move the moisture out of the spongy white fleshy backing, as it is so very prone to moulding. I'm wondering if cutting slits in the back of the sunflower head and placing it on a rack face down might help (in nature the heads bend and face down as the seed ripens). Maybe placing it in a nice warm location might speed things up, and have a fan blowing over it could help wick away humidity as well.

An interesting exchange. I hadn’t realised sunflowers are prone to inbreeding depression. Thanks @heirloomgal. I have a liking for the bronze coloured sunflowers, the darker the better. They self-seed readily in my veg garden and I have quite a lot, so perhaps that mitigates any effect of depression. But I have noticed this year that there’s a tendency to revert over the years to more yellow. Not much of a problem; I love yellow too!

I haven’t had a problem with mould forming when seed gathering, but perhaps I leave them longer on the plant to dry naturally. The problem then is getting the heads cut off before the birds get them. I’m happy to share to some extent but the timing is critical as the whole head’s worth can disappear very quickly.

 

[flowerbug]

...sunflowers...
I haven’t had a problem with mould forming when seed gathering, but perhaps I leave them longer on the plant to dry naturally. The problem then is getting the heads cut off before the birds get them. I’m happy to share to some extent but the timing is critical as the whole head’s worth can disappear very quickly.

yes, we have never been able to leave the heads out to fully dry (if we're lucky enough to get any at all to flowering stage) due to how many birdies and chipmunks are after them.

 

[heirloomgal]

An interesting exchange. I hadn’t realised sunflowers are prone to inbreeding depression. Thanks @heirloomgal. I have a liking for the bronze coloured sunflowers, the darker the better. They self-seed readily in my veg garden and I have quite a lot, so perhaps that mitigates any effect of depression. But I have noticed this year that there’s a tendency to revert over the years to more yellow. Not much of a problem; I love yellow too!

I haven’t had a problem with mould forming when seed gathering, but perhaps I leave them longer on the plant to dry naturally. The problem then is getting the heads cut off before the birds get them. I’m happy to share to some extent but the timing is critical as the whole head’s worth can disappear very quickly.

I didn't know about it either, until I talked with this seed saver who dabbles in breeding , which includes sunflowers. It looks like this inbreeding depression is recognized in the seed saving texts since I looked it up, so they recommend 20-50 plants and mention loss of vigor and so forth if you go with less. Seeds of Diversity in Canada recommends 40. This fellow believes 200 is better and said it can get quite severe the genetic depression over time. I personally haven't saved seeds for them so have no idea or experience really, but it looks like lots of sunflowers sold in packets are hybrids for this reason. I'm guessing that if hybrids get planted they can probably go on a long time self seeding without problems since there is a lot of genetic diversity present in their offspring?