I've done it and while it is fun to have them growing there on the property, and fun to harvest the seedheads, unless you plant hundreds of them, you aren't going to harvest enough seeds to make much of a difference when it comes to filling up your feeders.

If you have deer visiting your property as we do, they have a tendency to eat the plants....flowerhead (often before it blooms), leaves, stems, etc. This is a problem every year, but is a much more serious one in drought years. I've also found sunflowers attract a lot of pest insects. I used to grow them just inside my garden fence and finally stopped because of all the pest insects they attracted. Now, if I grow them at all, I plant them several hundred feet from the garden.

When I grew them, I would just cut the huge seedheads and set them on a shelf or table in the barn to dry. (This will work well as long as you don't have rodents or squirrels visiting the barn to eat the seeds as they dry.) After the seedheads air dried, I stacked them on a shelf. In the winter, I would take one seedhead outside and place it on the ground. The birds picked it clean in minutes. At the rate of one or two large flower seedheads per day, my harvest lasted maybe a month.

You can remove the seeds from the seedheads if you want to put them in a feeder, and it isn't hard. Just rub your hand back and forth over the dried seedhead and the seeds basically fall out.

Some years, when I planted sunflowers with smaller seedheads, I left the plants standing because they were in an out-ot-the-way area where no one really noticed them, except perhaps for our dogs in the fenced dog run. The birds harvested the seeds as they wished. Of course, that means all the seeds were gone long before cold weather even arrived. Sometimes the deer harvested the dried seedheads and are them as well.

The sunflowers that grow the really huge seedheads often need staking or the wind can really beat them up. I only staked them when I was growing them to form the walls of a sunflower house for the kids, and I used 6' tall green t-posts to stake them.

Economically feasible? Maybe if you planted an acre or two you might be able to raise enough to fill your feeders all winter. A small patch won't produce enough to make a dent in your feed bill.

Your mileage may vary, but for me, they weren't worth the trouble when it comes to producing seeds.

Dawn

My experience was the same as Dawn's. One year I raised a patch of plants and did harvest some heads and store them, putting them out in winter. But I only did it one year. The little black oil sunflower seeds that fell on the ground years ago around the chicken pen have established a reseeding population that produces plants 8-10 feet tall every year with many branches and dozens of small flowers producing small seeds. I always let a few of these grow just so I can watch the goldfinches hang from the seedheads in the fall. But for feeding in the winter, I buy the black oil sunflower seeds, mix half and half with chicken scratch grain and fill my feeders.

OK, girls! Both of your letters were very informative and told me exactly what I wanted to know. I have NO intention of planting a field of sunflowers, so guess I will plant these little seed pkts. just for the fun of watching them grow and watching the birds help themselves to a little extra buffet. I do have a few deer and problems with squirrels, raccoons and many mice, the mice being bold little critters who literally chewed the wiring through under the hood of my old car to the point where most of the dash instruments quit working. No longer have that car. Thanks for your responses. Jeanie

Mulberryknob, I have the same type of sunflower that reseeds from my bird food, and the birds love it. I leave it standing thru winter and they have food, come snow or whatever.

Last year, the spotted cucumber beetle had plenty to eat, but sunflowers are also larval host plants for the pretty little Gorgone Checkerspot and Silvery Checkerspot. They skeletonize the foliage, but won't eat that much because they are small. it is fun to watch them.

Susan