Sunflower heads are a popular choice for DIY projects and decorating, but they can also be dried to preserve them. To avoid mold formation, it is essential to dry sunflower heads in a warm and dry location, as they are dense and can easily retain moisture if kept in a cool and damp environment. Place cut heads on a screen or cloth, not touching, in a warm, dry, well-ventilated area out of direct sun. Turn the heads every 2-3 days to evenly dry.
To remove and clean seeds, gently rub the dried heads over a bucket or tarp to loosen and catch seeds. Pry off stubborn seeds. The easiest method is to hang the sunflowers upside down and leave them to dry, allowing the golden petals to curl around the heads. This process usually takes 2 weeks.
There are several methods for drying sunflowers, including air drying, using a dehydrator, oven drying, hanging sunflowers upside down, and microwaving. To air dry sunflowers, remove any leaves from the stem and hang them upside down from a wire or wooden peg rack in a dry, dark place using twine. It can take between two and four weeks for sunflowers to dry out completely. If you want to dry seed heads, hang them upside down in a dry shady place for several weeks. Cover each seed head with yarn or kitchen twine.
Sunflowers dry easily, and bin, batch, and continuous-flow dryers have been used successfully. The large seed allows air to pass easily, making it easier for the flowers to dry naturally while maintaining their shape.
In summary, drying sunflower heads is crucial for their preservation, especially for DIY projects and decorating. By following these steps, you can ensure that your sunflowers are preserved and ready for use in various ways.
📹 How to Harvest and Dry Sunflower Heads!
It’s time to harvest and dry our mammoth sunflowers that we grew in this years garden. This instructional video will show you just …
📹 Drying Sunflower Heads How an Amish Farmer Taught Me
Get perfect sunflower heads every time with this super easy way of hang drying. Sunflowers are food for animals, and if left alone …
I grew Mammoths kind of close to the house. The biggest grew over 10 ft tall; the dried head was over 14 inches across with a 3″ thick stalk and the seeds were huge! The squirrels would jump from the roof onto the stalk, climb onto other stalks and actually chew thru the stems and carry off whole sunflower heads! No obstacles for a hungry squirrel.
Thank you so much. I am sorry your sunflowers were pillaged but I believe, when you are trying to teach and encourage others to garden, it is good to see this and to hear your positive response to the squirrels ravaging your sunflowers. When we watch most of these shows, they do not show these hardships so when we have them at home we become disenfranchised with gardening. Now, we see that you have these problems too and how you handle it.
This year I had sunflower seeds all over from a bird feeder and I just let them grow. Slugs got a lot of them in the seedling stage, but quite a few grew to maturity. So many varieties grew and the bees just love them. I will cut the big ones down and dry them inside, but leave enough for the birds and squirrels, since there are so many.
I grow sunflowers specifically for the pollinators and the birds. It’s been a long time since I’ve grown sunflowers for my own consumption. The last time I did, I found little worms inside the shells. I didn’t eat any of the other seeds once I found the worms. I figure if the birds find worms in the shells, they would just eat them.
Dude. I really really enjoyed the information. I was literally looking for an explanation of why people did this. I saw it on a trip to the mountains of Mexico, an older lady that didn’t speak Spanish (like myself, so I couldn’t ask) had them like this hanging inside her home (she was a homesteader). I just remember the translator saying that she had harvested them for later. It never made sense until now. That area has a large variety of rodent wildlife, bats (which the hunt and eat), among other animals. Literally subscribed to you now! Have a great day!
Hi Luke! I’m in Oregon and I wondered if sometime you could demonstrate how to sharpen various garden tools ie!: Shovel, pruners trowel, etc. Thank you! I love your show, I’ve been perusal for a couple of years now! I’ve also joined the Facebook group and purchased seeds from migardener as well. Keep up the good work! 🌱
I grew mammoth sunflowers this year… The first sunflowers I’ve ever grown. I enjoyed them a much! Their fast rate of growth, the showy flowers and the edible results make them fun. I put mine in paper bags before I hung them. Of course, who can say better than the Amish? I think I’ll try both ways and see if the results are different…I still have sunflowers to harvest soon. I actually had quadruple headed sunflower! It was a sunflower I saved after it’s stem was broken partly when it was young. The bandage worked but the sunflower only got about 3 ft. tall. The blooms didn’t produce any full grown seeds, darn it. I have another couple of sunflower with double heads. Thank you for your article. I loved the history and information you provided. Good job.
Well brother, i must tell you. Not only did I thoroughly enjoy your childhood story, but I really got a lot of value out of the knowledge you gave me to store or dry out my sunflower seeds after this coming season. My wife buys a lot of birdseed, the oil sunflower seeds you know. So I intend on drying a good many heads out with this old Amish method. Thanks to you my brother. That’s a lot of talk you know, we will see what happens. I can only do my best. God bless you and thank you very much.
Excellent article! Thank you! Also wanted to let you know that I did an order of 99 cent seed packets from you and every single seed sprouted and grew for us! I’m not a great gardener, but having great seeds sure helps! Brilliant marketing technique on your end and excellent product! Happy customers are what makes business happen! You rock!
I do this method of drying( my mammoth sunzillas ) by hanging in the garage, but sometimes i do get mould on them. When that happens I will save what seeds i can and dry indoors. I didn’t know that they are ready when they start to droop ( I thought that was the weight of the heads). I also cut the whole plant stems as a record of growth for that years, which means I can see that they have been growing taller and taller each year ( they are now 2 metres plus for me)
Luke, I just got finished reading your book, “The Autopilot Garden” and it was a good book. I learned so many new things like Core Gardening, micronutrients and even woodchips and thier differences. I couldnt put your book down. I love the note section in the back, its surely going to help me get my garden on the autopilot stages.
I absolutely love growing sunflowers. I just grow them for joy. They are so beautiful. They make me feel happy to be alive. When I lived in Alabama I started to grow them as a sacrifice crop (trap crop or whatever you want to call it.) We literally had so many leaf-footed bugs. They would get all over your tomato plants. There was really no organic way to get rid of them because there are so many. After growing sunflowers for joy, I decided to grow lots and lots of them because I realized the leaf-footed bugs love the sunflowers the most. So if I had a lot of sunflowers the bugs would spend their time mostly in the sunflowers and leave other stuff alone. Plus they draw in tons of pollenators. After the sunflower head droops you wait for the back of it to start yellowing and then we would cut it like you do and stick the heads on the fence to dry. I would either leave them there for the birds to have or harvest some of the seeds for myself. We always seaded the heads with a table spoon.
I like seeing the little goldfinches in my yard, perched on the upright heads, but the squirrels are driving me crazy! My basement is a mess right now too, so I feel ya’! Never seen that method of drying. I refrigerate my sunflower seeds in the veg drawer, just in case there are little worms or their eggs present.
Fall has well and truly kicked in here. It has rained constantly for three weeks and the temps have really dropped Luke. We hang our sunflower and sometimes beans like that when the weather is bad like it is now. I will hang them over the shed rafter and harvest them when they are nice and dry. At least you got to the head of the white seeded sunflower to gather enough seed for next year. Great episode Luke
This was so helpful. I planted a sunflower garden this year with 3 varieties of sunflowers and they just finished their season and I couldn’t figure out what to do with them. I didn’t see any seeds and wondered what the next step was to get to them! Now I know and I have a shed they will be hanging in. Thanks so much
I had a huge sunflower and several days after it had sagged down, I chopped the head off. Didn’t want it to get eaten like the one the year before. After letting it sit for several more days the seeds were all empty. Let it sit several more days but didn’t get any seeds. This year I got nets to put on the heads so I could leave them on. The nets worked great this year. No issues.
I actually like to grow the sunflowers for birds and squirrels. I dry the heads on my back porch then lay out the heads in the front yard late autumn / early winter. I got a kick noticing that “somebody” dragged one large head to the base of our maple tree, and I was pleased to see the heads were mostly emptied out.
I live in Florida and so that means I planted my sunflowers in February. I just got my first head harvested as it’s drooping over. The animals haven’t figured out yet that it’s food and I just came here to find out what to do next as I’ve never grown them before. I wanted sunflowers for two reasons, one to eat the seeds as food and the other to plant those seeds in large numbers so I could eat the sprouts which I recently tried in a salad and found them delicious. So it is now last day of April and I have my first head as I said. We have extreme humidity here. We also have pests all times of the year. We don’t have basements so that’s out. I don’t have a shed so that’s out. If I leave it hanging anywhere outdoors the wild parrots will have a field day unless the crows or squirrels find them first. That leaves indoors. Humidity is so high here in Florida that I have to clean the bathroom walls every week to keep the mold levels down. I can’t have a lot of plants inside as they get covered in mold so my only choice is hanging the head right in front of a south facing window where I sometime start delicate seedlings like celery. So that is where I am going to try. Meanwhile since I planted seeds every week since mid February I will be harvesting about two-three heads every week at least into next January. Besides the regular 10-15 foot tall sunflowers I also have some orange decorative sunflowers that have dozens of heads per stalk and I am curious if those are edible.
9:50 … “Our shed does no have any rafters…” he said, while he had his hand on a rafter. If you hung those up in the basement, you were hanging them from a joist. All that being said, this article was very helpful and answered the questions I had about drying seed for replanting. Thanks for posting.
Great article, thank you! I have been saving the entire head with the petals. I grew these tall giants along the south side of my lettuce bed. Perfect shade! The day after I realized this, I saw it as a tip on one of your articles. Sunflower shade completely beat the shade netting beds. Also, that bed uses the least water from my Thirsty Earth olla system. Front full sun bed with netting uses about 1/3 bucket daily, Sunflower shade bed uses about 3-4″. Tomato shade netting bed uses about 6-7″ water from 5 gal bucket. high 90s-100* temps here in Albuquerque.
I planted about half dozen varieties of SF this year and thanks to your advice I’ll be saving lots of seeds. One trick I am trying is writing the variety name right on the back of the flower head in permanent marker as soon as picked so I know which is which once they dry. Hopefully it works. I suppose putting some sort of tag labels on them would work too.
Thank you! I saw this just in time. My sunflowers are definitely ready to be clipped and hung. I had tried putting bags around them to protect them but your method is much wiser. Thank you! My wife and I aren’t far from your store (we are in Macomb Township). Looking forward to having our entire garden from your seeds as the seasons go on. Garlic will be next on our list!!
We just went to a farm and went sunflower picking! For $19 each, we got snips to borrow and a mason jar to keep. We stuffed the jars! And i even got a bunch of different varieties, some with black seeds and some with white! I was surprised, I didn’t know there was white seeds! But OMG! I even got one that was 10 ft tall, the head is over a foot across!
Thank you for your help the squirrel population has been attacking my sunflower garden and eating them all so I checked the seeds and they were full but not dry and the squirrel 🐿️ 🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️family ate a stalk off and they are enormous and clean most of the seeds are then birds were eaten by them so my husband was concerned that they were not dry enough and I said I have to leave them away from the plants so they won’t all be eaten so I have did exactly what you said as I am a gardener by nature and I have instinctively did this before I even knew that it was possible to grow them next year. Thanks again for your advice. I feel assured that I will have a beautiful garden next time! Have a wonderful day !😊
Around here it’s the goldfinch that will eat all the seeds, fortunately they’re beautiful to watch, and they always drop a few so the sunflowers tend to come up volunteer every year. I have been growing a decorative multi flowered variety this way for years. I’m growing Russian mammoth this year though and intend to harvest the seeds for eating, so this method will come in handy.
First time I grew sunflowers at all Started on march 1 with seeds in sunny window HAD 10 plants, only 1 survived. It was a mammoth s.f. It grew to 5 feet . I.JUST cut it down after perusal your article . Thank you for posting. I’m disappointed it only grew 5 feet. The head 7 inches wide. When the green turns brown I will do what u said. I have it hanging upside down drying it out. Next spring I will plant in different area and plant seeds in the ground. One was better then nothing Joy Jacks
Awesome info… I was really needing to know how to preserve my sunflower seeds. I have plants over 12 ft high. The starts were given to me as a fun addition to my flower bed. Wow! Did I get a big surprise… the flowers are crazy big, so I really needed some help. TY for sharing! Your’e doing a great job. P.S. I like shorter articles. 😉
Thank you so much! I really enjoy your website. You have a gift for explaining things in the thorough and concise way. You explain the whys behind what you do which is very important to me. It helps it to stick in my brain. Your articles are very concise and to the point which I like. I do not have a lot of time for fluff. I do not consider your childhood stories fluff. They also help the nugget stick. I have subscribed to your website. You are good enough that I may consider sending you a monthly monetary gift. You should get paid for what you do. You are that good. Thanks!
This article was very informative. I’m waiting way to long to harvest my sunflowers. I also have a bunch of albino seeds and I’ve been waiting thinking they’re not done yet because there’s no black stripe. I didn’t know there was such thing as albino sunflower seeds. 🤦♀️ I’m glad you mentioned that & going to harvest those tomorrow. Thank you for such a great article.
So glad I can take my flowers down NOW before the battle with the animals begins! Lol. Thank you for letting us know that the seeds are ready now! I’ll miss my giant beauties bobbing their gorgeous heads, looking like live creatures, but I’m happier to know I’ll get ALL my seeds and will be eating them raw in no time. Best way. Thank you again Luke! You’re such a dork in an awesome way. Lol.
I planted Mammoth Sunflowers this year by seed and was amazed at how fast they actually grow. Randomly planted more seeds and next thing i know I have a bunch of sunflowers. Mine are actually at least ten feet tall and I look forward to harvesting the largest ones really soon. By the looks of it, one head will be enough for years of more sunflowers for sure so a lot to give away and enjoy myself!
Lol. I go through the same thing every year. I grow sunflower every year and this is the first year I was actually able to save some. My kids love how I grow them. I hope the mammoth that grew almost 11 ft tall grows again from the very few seeds I was able to save. I would love white ones! I learned a few new things from this article, thank you!
THANK YOU!! I’ve been growing sunflowers for decades, but only able to save a small percentage of the seed each year. (The Moose here in Maine love them 😋). I was taught to not harvest untill all the green was gone from the back of the seed head, by which time many birds and insects have indulged. I will be harvesting a bit earlier this year and hopefully enjoying more.
I grew up in Minnesota. I merely learned how to keep warm. If it was 32 or above I would go out running in nylon running shorts. When I tell people that I’m not going to move back there- I’m usually told, “It’s because of the winters isn’t it?” I say, “No it’s because of the summers,” There are 3-4 weeks of fall in MN but there are 3-4 months in Colorado’s front range. And I love autumn.
When you guys (I mean all of you who made sunflower seed vids)…..talk about bringing in sunflowers to dry seeds you need to talk about the worms in some of the seeds. (out of 4 vidz not one person mentioned it) Worms eat the seeds so are hidden inside the seed case and not visible. As soon as you start to shake up and pull off seeds they come out. If you in a barn …. no big deal but if we doing this inside our house it would have been help to know. Plus I did what you said… let the head dry out in tact. This caused me to lose over half my seeds to the worms who were happily feasting the entire time they were hanging to dry. If I had removed the seeds immediately they would have been much easier to get off the flower head and i could have found the pods with worms before they ate half the head. Just a tip for next time.
Thanks for this article!!.. I’ve got 10 Sunflower seedlings about to go in the ground… I bought these specifically for harvesting the seeds to eat (roasted), and for planting next year… It’s only my second time growing Sunflowers, so I learned a few things NOT to do this time around, but still looking to learn more!!
Let’s hope I got it right. I’ve got some sunflowers that are huge that I’m trying to save seeds from. I’ve cut 2 and let them hang upside down for a few days b4 getting the seeds. I hope the seeds are good. I’ve got a few handfuls of seeds drying out the rest of the way in a coffee can under a fan after hanging for a few days.
I always wondered where the seeds were in that big middle part. Very fascinating article and I’m now convinced to try my own hand at growing sunflowers next year for my chickens to have some treats, and probably to make some fodder with also! First time watcher. Thank you so much for sharing what you learned!
Thank you so much for sharing Luke!! You have such a great website! I’ve been perusal you for yrs and you always have such amazing information and tricks to share. Thank you for being here!! I grew a lot of sunflowers this past summer and I hung them upside down just like you’re doing. It’s such an easy method to dry them. I love collecting the seeds and my favorite part is when I get to take all the flower petals off and expose the seeds underneath bedore drying them upside down lol
I live in the PNW where we get early fall rain and I run the chance of mold/rot. I cut the heads off with a small part of the stem to use as a handle. I have a hanging dryer (fabric netting) that I lay the heads upside down and just let the dry there in my house since we have such high humidity outside.
Awesome tip! So much useful information to derive from your website, even if we’re in quite different zones (Scandinavia at the artic circle here). I’ve started seeding sunflowers in stages due to unpredictable climate, but I know close to nothing regarding this plant, and with no local tips on seed-harvest (its typically just ornaments here), I was quite concerned that the birds I intentionally attract (its otherwise just used as bird-feed here) would nip them before harvest, this was very helpful to know. Thumbs up as always, but with a commentary appreciation. Be well, stay well, and grow well (be it big, or at home 🙂)
Just for fun I planted about 40k seeds over like an acre. Months later I have a ton of seeds but did not dry out the heads first. I just snipped all of the heads and laid them to dry in the sun, making the birds job easy. So I started covering them when I left the farm at night and the Goldfinches went hungry haha. Anyway now I have buckets of seeds that are not all totally dry. I am stirring them up periodically and moving them to containers allowing more surface area exposed for drying. I am thinking about baking them, do you or anyone else have any experience drying already extracted seeds?
Be careful, your preaching to the wrong church! I grow all for wildlife! I am the former wildlife expert, and wildlife infirmary supervisor for Howell Nature Center rehab program in your very own state of Michigan! You are so awesome in what you do! If u ever need an answer to a wildlife question, or anything related let me know.
You say we don’t have to wait for the heads to drop over and the stems to start turning all yellow before we harvest seeds, so I picked mine when you said to, after the while flower was done pollinating. But guess what? It was too early and I have no sunflower seeds this year. I’m so bummed. I will never just hack off a bunch of stuff again until I really,think it through. I .ove your website and have learned a lot but this one I think you many want to edit and fix. God bless.
I was happy to learn about the seed storing for sunflowers. But intrigued about the mystery of the old gentleman. It should be easy to learn his name. Just go back to the community and talk to the person who owns his farm now. Most likely it is a family member or friend of the old gentleman. If they don’t know, ask who around the farm (neighboring farms) has lived there the longest. Most likely there will be someone who is old enough to remember the old gentleman. If that doesn’t work ask about the church leaders who oversee the group. Someone will know. You are not that old Luke. There should be someone who is still alive and remembers. But time is wasting. Do it soon if you really want to know. Thank you for the information on seed saving. This topic has been on my mind.
That’s funny, we actually grow sunflowers to attract the birds to our yard. We enjoy perusal them. We have squirrels only on occasion, so that’s no problem. We grow the sunflowers away from our garden so the volunteers that come up don’t hurt anything. Where we used to live we did have squirrels in abundance, but they caused us no harm there either.
i was worried about cutting some Mammoth Russians down too soon, maybe before the seeds were fully mature (and viable for next year). I had to do it anyway because of a storm, so no looking back, but this article has me less worried because the ones in the article are still green on the back, where at least mine had gone a little yellow! If these ones were ready, mine should be too.