Saturday, November 5, 2011

Hey guys! I'm back at it with my garden. I have been away and some things have come up, like WINTER! haha, but weather aside things have kept me from updating on my gardens.

So anyway, Can you guess what is in the above piture , the white out of focus thing. THATS right! it's a sunflower seed!

 My sunflowers are reaching the end of their days. And what a mighty time they have given me. From just tiny seeds to mamoth towers of leaves and yellow peddels. So nice to look at , and fun to watch grow. But alas all good things must end. My sunflowers are on their last legs and are drooping to and dropping seeds! However this is a good sign for me.
Once you get a majority of the flower to have mature seeds it is time to harvest. If you look at the pic to the left you can see all the lines of white leading to the center. As well as the darker spots, those being the places where seeds have fallen out. This is good and bad. Because it means I will have larger seeds, but less of them.

Then the time comes to sever the head of the flower! And I have just the tool! That is correct, a hand saw!

Although my job at cutting went well I only got about 1/6 of the way through before the weight of the sunflower head broke the steam and it just fell. Lucky I caught it, because the process of drying it out is what is next to come!
I am drying my sunflower head upside down, so all the fancy sap and juices drain all the way into the seeds. this means that it will take longer to dry , but will also be more tasty! In just about 2 weeks time I should have my own home made sunflower seeds to munch on!

OK! Thank you for being a reader of my blog. And come back soon!

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