Bird seed as a cheap seed source for sunflowers and other useful plants

General Discussions
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Last year I borrowed some sunflower seeds from my neighbor’s bird feeder and planted them. They grew into beautiful plants with a fair amount of variation among them. This year I discovered that i can buy a 40 pound bag of “black oil sunflower” seeds for about $20. The seeds are viable; in fact they germinate very well with minimal or no attention. I’ve been scattering them all around. The cardinals enjoy this and also now I have many sunflower seedlings. ( I also have more deliberately sowed several other types of sunflowers. What can I say, I like sunflowers a lot. ) I just thought I’d mention this affordable birdseed option to the sunflower lovers out there. With so many seeds, you can explore many possibilities. The sunflowers seem to enjoy growing together in a thick patch, which creates a nice screening effect. It’s really amazing how the birds are responding to the extra habitat even though the plants aren’t producing seeds yet. Last year the sunflowers were very popular with the swallowtail and monarch butterflies so I’m looking forward to that as well.

Similarly, I purchased a 20 pound bag of “finch seed” for about $23. It contains flax, millet, canola, a different type of large, elongated, striped sunflower seed, and nyjer. The nyjer appears to be sterile but everything else readily germinated. I’ve been using it as a cover crop between garden beds. The flax flowers are a lovely blue. The canola plants are very similar to their close relative kale in flavor. The canola flower stalks are tender and tasty; the yellow flowers attract many bees. So, another source of readily available and cheap bulk seed. The finches and other seed eating birds appreciated this experiment. Interestingly, the birds foraged avidly for the seeds and yet there are still plenty of seedlings popping up.

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Just a word of warning to anyone buying the mixed bird seed to read the label. My neighbor puts it out and his had thistle seed in it now guess what I have all over. On a positive note I also have sunflowers and some kind of grain.

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I did this years ago (with the sunflowers) and still have a patch that reseeds every year.
The flowers are smaller than the original plants, but the leaves don’t wilt in summer anymore.
They have definitely adapted to my climate.
Sunflower stalks break down easily after winter and they make a nice mulch.

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I also grow the wild sunflowers, which have smaller flowers on multiple branched stalks. I like them because they bloom over a longer period of time than the lollipop types of sunflowers. I use old sunflower stalks as mulch too. Sunflowers are useful in a number of ways. They make good trellis for pole beans and scarlet runner beans.

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Now that right there is super interesting. Canola is (Brassica napus) which is a Hybrid between Brassica oleraceae x Brassica rapa. This would explain why it tasted so good. You should put it into the GTS this year, would be fun.

That’s super cost effective. Imagine buy that many seed packets! This is why I like Grocery Stores, I also found bird seeds being sold there too. I was hoping you can start a sunflower landrace. It would be awesome if we could get some into the GTS too.

So is it the regular grocery store flax or is this another variety of it?

Super interesting indeed, They probably spilled onto soil or got forgot. Birds can only see bird’s eye view meaning they are likely to miss seeds that are out of sight.