Sunflower

Sunflower is direct-sown once the soil has warmed to about 45°F or above, with seed set roughly one to three inches deep and plants spaced two to three feet apart in full sun. It tolerates a wide soil pH range and adapts to many soil types, growing best when kept evenly moist while young, though established plants become notably drought tolerant. Tall types with large, heavy flower heads often need staking to keep the stem upright.

Sunflower is largely free of serious diseases and pests, though its tall stems and heavy flower heads can flop without staking.

Pests: Birds and rodents are strongly attracted to ripening seed heads, and gardeners commonly rely on scarecrows or netting to protect them; in large-scale field production, insect, disease, and bird pressure have at times been significant enough to affect regional plantings.

Sunflower is harvested for seed once the heads reach physiological maturity, when kernel moisture content has dropped to roughly 10 to 13 percent.

Culinary: Sunflower seeds are eaten raw, roasted, cooked, dried, or ground, and are pressed for a light, bland cooking and salad oil; roasted seeds have also been used as a coffee substitute, and the seeds have been milled into bread in Russia and Portugal.

Industrial: The oil has been used in paints, varnishes, soaps, and detergents, and blended with diesel fuel as an alternative fuel source; sunflower meal left after oil extraction is fed to ruminants, swine, and poultry, and the whole green plant can be cut for forage or silage.

Ornamental: Sunflower is grown in pollinator and cutting gardens for its showy flower heads, and mature seed heads are sometimes left standing through fall and winter as a food source for birds.

Medicinal: Several Native American peoples used sunflower medicinally and ceremonially: the Dakota used it for chest pains and pulmonary problems, the Cherokee drank an infusion for kidney troubles, the Paiute used the root for rheumatism, the Hidatsa pressed the seeds for cooking oil, the Navajo used the plant in sun sand-painting ceremonies, and the Zuni applied a poultice of it to draw venom from snakebites.

Sunflower is one of the few major crops domesticated in North America rather than the Old World; Native American tribes are thought to have first cultivated it around 1000 BCE, growing it alongside corn, beans, and squash, with other evidence pointing to domestication in Mexico by about 2300 BCE. Spanish explorers carried the plant to Europe in the 1500s, where it was grown mainly as a curiosity until it reached Russia, and selection there beginning in 1860 raised seed oil content from about 28 percent to nearly 50 percent.