We are thinking of landracing sunflowers. We love them!
There are 36 varieties of sunflower seed in our collection. They vary in color, height and the size of seed. We are not sure if we should mix them all together or create separate lines.
Should they be separated into separate based on seed size, or plant height? Would it make a difference, because we intend on eating larger seed and give the rest of the smaller seed to the birds. We just worry that the taller sunflowers will outcompete, and shade out the shorter ones.
We were thinking that pollinators could do the crosses, and we could hand cross the shorter ones because we would like a mixture of sizes and colors.
Love it! Sunflowers make me happy, but are always an afterthought for me after all the chores i find the sunflower package and half assed grow them and they get eaten.
But the serendipity has given me quite some variation to start again.
I’m just going to mix them in altogether, five varieties…
But having 36!
I’d go by size. and color them. The giant Red and the mini mult headed blue,the thick headed white is middle sized. Then in a wind block on the north looking south, you’ll have a Dutch flag.
Meh. I don’t know. But size together i guess that’s important.
We’ll probably make an attempt at some breeding work. We’d like to grow oil seed sunflowers for the chickens but we’d like, big, multi-headed and multi-coloured sunflowers.
I guess it really depends what you want and how you like to do things. With sunflowers, there are a few main phenotypes and many more subtle variations. In overall structure there’s tall vs short. In flowering habit, there’s the single lollipop flower favored by oilseed growers vs the wild multiflora type. I grow sunflowers primarily for insect and songbird habitat and secondly as trellis for my scarlet runner beans. I select for the multiflora type because they flower over a longer period and produce seed over a longer period than the lollipops which tend to all flower and seed en masse. I select for tall, sturdy, multibranched stems because they make the best trellis for my runner beans. I leave the dead stalks standing all winter as habitat for songbirds - they really appreciate the perches and cover.
But Joseph Lofthouse has very different and very reasonable selection criteria for his sunflowers. I think it makes total sense for his purpose. My criteria make sense to me for my purposes. So I really think it is a matter of what are your personal goals.
In terms of whether to segregate or mix: if you have enough space you could do both. One mixed bed on one end and your segregated beds separated by some distance. Most pollination happens very locally so you don’t need enormous distances.
Sunflowers are impressive! Thank you for the input and information.
We didn’t realize that they are capable of doing all of that. We are interested in their use as a living trellis, trap crop for leaf footed insects, gorgeous colors, pollinator attractor, bird seed, and for fresh eating.
After reading the replies we will separate our seed by sunflower height: short, medium, tall? And grow them in separate growing locations.
There are a lot of culinary uses of sunflowers besides seed production. I’m exploring improving the immature flower heads (unopened) as an artichoke replacement. The flavor is similar. You fillet the green outside and you are left with a tender tasty inner flesh of the not yet formed flower. I’m selecting for short flower stems and internodal flowers (basically opposite of the cut flower varieties. Also self seeding and taste. I want to be able to pluck the immature flowers like apples off the stalk. I’m in a community garden so I expect to not be very successful with this until I get my own property but I’m making the effort anyway.
Other uses for sunflowers include edible leaves. They could be selected to be more tender and less fibrous. People use them to wrap fish or other things in to steam. Also the flower head with immature seeds can be baked and eaten like corn on the cob with butter salt and pepper. Some improvement in getting the right size flowers as well as flavor could be done. Also the petals are edible I make a yellow kimchi out of them. They are very bitter but I’m sure that could be selected out.
