Do you cook them with garlic and bay leaf and then dip them in melted butter? They taste pretty much the same?

Thanks for the tip, I'll try them.

Well, now I gotta try it. good thing I always plant a few,BTW would it make any difference weather or not it is the oil type or the seed eating type?

I read this somewhere and tried it once a couple of years ago. I was not so impressed with the sunflower 'hearts' but perhaps I did not harvest at the right time? also I think I steamed instead of sauteeing in olive oil. It might be worth trying again. I tried it with the large type of sunflowers, mammoth they are called if I remember right?

Sunflowers are wonderful in the garden, they act as trap crops, attract beneficials, look great, and you can eat them! Ours get eaten by the squirrels a lot, but this is Ok since they leave my other crops alone mostly.

denninmi~ How long does it take from seeding to bud harvest? Maybe you could get in 2 crops a year.

Sounds like a nice alternative to artichokes for us cooler climate gardeners. Gotta give it a try, thanks!

-Diggity

Here is a link that might be useful: Garden Imperative

Some followup on this:

I would definitely harvest them pretty young, before the bud is so large that you can see any color on the disk, IMO. Too old, and they get pithy. Probably something to learn by trial and error. I only tried them the one time last summer. When I did it, I peeled them, par-boiled them, cut them into bite sized pieces, and threw them into a white cheese pesto pasta sauce. I thought they were pretty similar to artichoke hearts overall, but to be fair, with parmesan, basil, and garlic going on in there, that's a lot of strong flavors to mask the milder ones. Next summer, I will try them relatively plain, just with butter, to see what they're like.

And, I would definitely use the oilseed types or the mammoth types, since seed is cheap and the head is larger than many of the cut flower types.

I would say that they probably take something like 60 to 80 days from seed, but it would depend a lot on climate and weather. Faster in warmer climates.

Alas, I see it isn't my original idea, as I suspected all along. That's ok. Still intrigues me, enough that I'll try it more this year.

What got me thinking of this was I bought a can of artichoke hearts the other day for a casserole, and remembered I wanted to post about this to see what comments I got.

I will try it myself for sure. I am a great fan of artichokes. Plus, this way you beat the squirrels to it. Just to spite them.

arent sunflowers poisen?,i heard that they give you kidney stones if you eat any part but the seed.

Well, I hadn't considered the possibility of this. Maybe there is a reason this isn't done.

I googled, and I didn't find very many sites that said anything about sunflowers being toxic per se.

Quite a few sites have mentionled that sunflowers can accumulate nitrates to levels high enough to cause toxicity in cattle. So, I guess not a good idea to fertilize them heavily if you want to do this.

Also, they are recognized as causing an allergic reaction/skin rash in some people, but I suppose that's true of almost anything.

So, maybe my brilliant idea wasn't such a good one after all.

Here is a link that might be useful: Sunflower toxicity

Sunflower sprouts can be routinely found for sale in stores. They are spicy and the very best sprout IMHO.

I used to grow them indoors in the winter but their erratic germination discouraged me. In comparison, if you fill a seedling tray solid with compost, lay down a thick layer of peas, in two weeks you are going to have a thick jungle of shoots that will give you a few salads.

This does not mean the sunflower is or is not edible. Compare with asparagus or pokeweed, whose shoots are edible but the mature plants are poisonous.

Finally, I do not know anyone who fertilizes sunflowers. They grow like weeds regardless.

I just ate one......

I am starting to feel woozy ;-)

That's it, if Jon does not post in the next two days, I am not going to eat them.

I'm growing sunflowers for the first time this year, and am concerned, like mentioned above, about the squirrels. How do you all protect the seeds?

I hope this thread is around 7 or 8 months from now for some updates with pictures :-)

The plants are not poisonous to groundhogs or deer, lol. I dunno about humans.