Meet a modern day “Johnny Appleseed”. Scott Wright, is passionate about sunflowers – and he wants to give you seed. “Scotty Sunflower Seed” as he is known has been drawn to working with these plants as a spiritual journey. I met Scott at a primitive skills gathering where he was using this gigantic sunflower stalk for a walking stick, and offering bags of seed to anyone who would promise to grow them. So I got a few minutes with him on film talking about how to grow them, how much water they need, fertility requirements, etc. And I’ve been inspired to grow some myself.
Actually, I’ve always wanted to grow more sunflowers as this is a very important form of calories that are heat and drought resistant. If you recall, the seeds are a viable source for home-scale oil pressing.
Scotty’s FB page is at https://www.facebook.com/Life.Illuminated his photos are just stunning! And I mean really stunning.
Marjory Wildcraft is an Expedition Leader and Bioneer Blogger with The [Grow] Network, which is an online community that recognizes the wisdom of “homegrown food on every table.” Marjory has been featured as an expert on sustainable living by National Geographic, she is a speaker at Mother Earth News fairs, and is a returning guest on Coast to Coast AM. She is an author of several books, but is best known for her “Grow Your Own Groceries” video series, which is used by more than 300,000 homesteaders, survivalists, universities, and missionary organizations around the world.
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Good timing on the sunflower video. My plan is to plant a black oil seed variety because it produces more oil. Also there is a hand cranked oil expeller from Holland called the piteba that works well. There are several decent YouTube videos on it. Baileys and Lehmans carry it for around $200. http://non-electric.lehmans.com/hardware/Oil%20Expeller
The nice part is you can feed the leftover cake to your animals since is high in protein. Also since oil will go rancid you simply leave it in seed form and expel only as much as you can use before the oil goes bad. Obviously the seed will keep until the next crop comes in.
Hi Lonestar,
Have you had a chance to use the Piteba yet? I have one, but not used it )yet). What are your experiences with it? I am curious!
Once I saw a sunflower growing right out of a rock! They must be pretty hardy.
Hey Selene,
If the sprouts can survive a freeze. Yeah, pretty tough little buggers.
I agree with what Scotty Sunflower Seed said about growing Sunflowers. I have grown them over the last 10 years and used the stalks for flutes. I let the birds eat the seeds but may have to start harvesting them this year. has 2 photos up of a Sunflower Flute Auctioned in 2006 at Paleo Planet. I do use the height and hardiness in 115 degree heat to shade plants that cannot take afternoon sun in Mesa AZ desert. I wanted to get out to Winter Count but was too busy. My friends from SALT were there.
Lenny, that is a beautiful flute. Hope to see you at next years gathering.
Planting for the most crop per plant does not usually give you the most crop for area planted. Just as planting to thick hurts yield so does planting to thin. But if you use inter planted crops then how thick you need to plant changes.
I planted sunflowers last year and got amazing big flowers. I covered them with a nets and let them dry on the stalk before cutting and bringing in. When removing the seed most were empty. What did I do wrong? Very little to eat after all the work.
Oh dear. Hmm, and you covered them with nets – to keep out the birds (which love sunflower seeds). Ants I wonder?
Maybe the nets hampered the bees in pollinating each individual flower.
No sex, no fruit!
What amazing photography on Scotty Sunflowers FB page but I saw nothing on sunflowers. Does he have a web page also?
Hi Sharon,
I think he only has the FB page.
Hi Marjory!
I happened onto a little tidbit watching the Olympics last week that sparked my curiosity. They were talking about our competitors getting fresh food and just happened to mention that all the produce in their stores is ORGANIC!! Looked it up and found that there over 60% of their food is grown locally and is organic. The gov’t encouraged people to start growing and gave small plots. And they did away with artificial chemical farming. The first few years yield went down and after that and the soil recouperated the yield went back up and grows by 2% per year. Now isn’t that a fantastic idea? So most of their food is now home grown—it can be done. Even on a national scale…
Thanks for all your info,
Mary
Hi Mary,
Wow, thanks for bringing that up.
I’ve been meaning to do research on victory Gardeners where very similar thing happened – backyard gardens started producing a very large percentage of the US vegetables in a very short period of time.
A whole new way of looking at sunflowers is to eat them when they are only about 2 or 3 inches tall — avid spouters call them “sunnies”. Check out the YouTube videos on how to grow them. My favorite YouTube vid is “Fingertip Gardening” (but I use 7 tablespoons of seed instead of 4 tablespoons when growing in a pie plate). Sunnies are delicious. There is something about watching the seeds sprout and grow in the dead of winter and eating them fresh that is just so satisfying.
Oh Laura, YES. Sunflower sprouts are delicious. Thanks for bringing this up.
Hello,do you recommend a particular place to purchace BULK ORGANIC Peredovik seeds? Thank you.