Sunflower Harvest

What started as another experiment in the garden turned into a beautiful sight. Between the rows of blueberries, Uncle Bob suggested that we plant two rows of corn. When you plant corn you have to soak the kernels overnight in water. The kind we had was covered in this pink stuff that I later learned is fertilizer and will dye anything it touches pink. He told me to put three kernels together in a hole in the row and make them at least a foot apart. In the shed, he found some sunflower seeds. They look just like the kind you buy in a bag and enjoy at a baseball game. In one of the rows Uncle Bob had me drop a few sunflower seeds in between the corn. He said if the birds don't get to them then I will have beautiful sunflowers in between the corn. I was excited to see if they would grow.

The corn and sunflowers were quick to sprout in the miracle mud. Before I left the corn was over a foot tall and well on it's way. By the time I arrived at the beginning of August one row of corn was ready to be eaten and the second row was all sunflowers. They completely dwarfed the growth of the other row of corn. Thankfully the blooms were gorgeous. They had grown twelve to fourteen feet tall. One of them had a stalk wider than a baseball bat. It was nice but I was kind of disappointed that none of the corn in that row survived. I had planted a different species in each row. Now I would only be able to enjoy one kind and I had these flowers that were pretty but going to die soon.

Uncle Bob came by and asked if I was going to harvest the sunflowers for the seeds. What? You mean the huge flowers are where sunflower seeds come from? I was honestly surprised because every time I had sunflowers that I bought from a store, I never saw sunflower seeds in the blossoms. I guess I wasn't really sure where the seeds came from and assumed there was a sunflower seed making variety of plant. If you don't ask questions you're never going to find out the information you may have wanted to know. So I then asked Google how to harvest the sunflowers.

Sunflower harvesting is a process that requires good timing and outsmarting the birds. You can let the seeds dry out naturally in the garden but in doing so you risk them falling to the ground or being enjoyed by birds as a lovely meal. Google suggested waiting until all the petals fall off and the backs start to turn yellow. The seeds start to get the familiar black lines. Then you cut them off with at least 12 inches of stalk still attached. Put a brown bag over the once beautiful blossom and hang them to dry in a warm shed. Lucky me, I actually have a really warm shed perfect for drying them! I probably would have built one specifically for this purpose if there wasn't one here. There are hundreds of seeds in every blossom and all the while I was thinking I had planted pretty, but useless flowers. I enjoy being wrong in times like these.

Once I had done my research, I headed straight down to the garden to see what Google was talking about. I was shocked. These flowers that I was looking at for so long, all the sudden seemed different. I had a new perspective. I saw the seeds! It was like a Christmas miracle and I was so excited! Then, I had to wait about a week. Most of the sunflowers still had petals. This whole garden thing is testing my patience. At least now that the flowers were getting uglier, I knew I still had something to look forward to.

I took down four blossoms today and over the next week, the entire row will be ready for harvest. There is one blossom that is so big and has so many seeds that it could feed an entire dugout for a whole baseball game. The garden row can probably supply a team for a season. Now they hang and I'm back to waiting for the seeds to fall. Then it will be another project trying to figure out how to roast them. I'm sure Google will have something to say about that as well.