What kinds of sunflower seeds can you eat?

[HotPepperQueen]

I bought a pack of sunflower seeds that are called Autumn Beauty mix. It doesn't specify on the package if you can dry and eat them. Is it kind of like corn where you can technically eat all kinds but only certain ones taste good?

 

[so lucky]

I'm not positive, but I think the seeds would be so small on the ornamental varieties that you wouldn't be able to hull them. Only the Mammoth Grey Stripe (or something like that) has the large seeds. I guess you could do the chew and spit thing with the seeds....I've seen some people do that. I doubt that any of them would be poisonous.

 

[897tgigvib]

I have Autumn Beauty too, and will be growing some this year. Have not grown this variety since 2007.

So Lucky is right, the seeds are simply small. Notice in the pack that some are a bit bigger. Those might be doable, so mark those plants as possible for cooking up. If you cook them up, be careful you don't burn them. You'll need little rabbit teeth to open them, but it ought to be fun.

I'm growing a few of each of all the sunflower varieties I have this year, and I'll try to cross them up too. One variety I have is called Oilseed Sunflower. I purchased a pitebo hand cranked oil press to make sunflower seed oil.

A good number of sunflower varieties have good big seeds for eating. Seems that the more colorful the flower, the smaller the seed. I'd kinda like to fix that by some crossing.

 

[catjac1975]

I bought a pack of sunflower seeds that are called Autumn Beauty mix. It doesn't specify on the package if you can dry and eat them. Is it kind of like corn where you can technically eat all kinds but only certain ones taste good?

Russian giant. The fancy varieties that you have will have little or no viable seed. Too small to bother trying to eat.

 

[Chickie'sMomaInNH]

any of the varieties that get very large should give you edible seeds of decent size. usually the Russian Mammoth, Kong, Giant Grey Stripe, Black Oil (not usually sold for human eating but you can get it from the feed stores for about $3 for 4lbs bags for birds and they will grow and produce lots of small side blooms and one large center bloom.) pretty much any of the names sounding like they should grow very large heads or very tall stalks-mammoth, titan, giant

 

[897tgigvib]

Autumn Beauty is one of the viable seeded ornamental Sunflowers. They are not Hybrids, and they are not pollenless. Autumn Beauty will indeed make plenty of seeds. Most folks grow them just for the birds and or for their pretty flowers.

 

[jomoncon]

I planted sunflowers this year, but not for me to eat, but for my chickens! I have chickens that just love Black Oil Sunflower seeds. Since a bag of these can be quite expensive, I bought regular bird seed that had some sunflowers in it, picked out the Black Oil Sunflower seeds, and planted a short row of these. With the warm weathers we've been having, the sprouted within a week. I hope I can protect them from the wild birds who also seem to love them.