hi this is yolanda vanveen and in this
segment we're going to talk about how to
harvest sunflowers
so there's so many different types of
sunflowers that you can use and harvest
and there's different reasons that you
want to harvest them whether you're
cutting the sunflowers as a cut flower
and harvesting them in that way are
actually waiting for them to go to seed
and then taking the seeds and drying
them and using them as a food product
but either way they're really easy to
harvest and there's some certain rules
to follow so when you're harvesting
sunflowers for cut flowers you wait till
they just turn into a sunflower but they
haven't gotten to the point where
they're already dying so as soon as
they're in the sunflower shape and the
petals have all arched up and they're in
a big sunshine position then you just
cut the sunflower down to the ground or
any space that you want it can be long
or short it doesn't matter and you cut
them and put them into fresh water
immediately and cut the stems every two
or three days and add fresh water and
you can have great cut sunflowers so if
you're growing the sunflowers for seed
you want to go past the bloom time you
don't want to harvest them right when
they're in bloom because they're still
in the pollen state you want to wait on
the sunflowers to use for sunflower
seeds that are edible they'll make a big
big plate
and then as soon as the seeds look like
sunflower seeds and you can actually
almost start falling off if there's
really stuck to the sunflowers still
they're not ready it's to the point
they're almost just falling off of the
sunflower and you can pull maybe one
seed out and if it looks just like a
sunflower seed should
then that is the time to harvest them
and the trick is you've got to dry them
out immediately because you don't want
them to get moldy or you don't want them
to get too wet and you want them to be
at that perfect state so that you can
eat them now most sunflowers have been
baked so the fresh sunflower seeds
usually are baked so that you can eat
them and they taste better and salted so
just dry them out in the sun or you can
take the seeds and put them right into
the oven in one single layer and dry
them with a little bit of salt and then
as long as they're dry they will store
for years so you can put them in a paper
bag or a plastic bag the paper seems to
be the best or put them into a glass jar
and you can store the sunflowers that
way so you can enjoy them all winter
long