7 Ways To Eat & Use Sunflowers That Will Surprise You!

this video is sponsored by curiosity stream hey guys welcome back so today we're going to be using these sunflowers in a bunch of different and interesting ways and hopefully i can share at least one use for these that you haven't seen before and that you're keen to try it yourself so let's just get straight into it and i can show you how you can make the most out of these plants and flowers to give you a rough idea on growing these sunflowers we had an area of bare grounds that we had stored wood chip mulch on top of and once we cleared that off we thought we may as well just grow something there in the meantime so we roughed the ground up a bit with a rake and spread some compost over the top and because sunflowers aren't the best plants to transplant really because they've got a really deep tap root i directly sewed them straight into the ground along with a few other things like dwarf beans and squash plants i kept them well watered throughout the summer and that's really all i did to get them to grow and reach a good height later in the summer it was also good to be able to harvest some other produce from this really basic and quick garden setup [Music] okay so you can eat a sunflower head when the seeds are young and immature so they should still be nice and tender so we'll cut this off and cook it up but if you look at this flower here you can see that within here there's tons and tons of these tiny little flowers these are called disc florets and they connect to an individual sunflower seed and basically when these flower you'll notice that they start flowering just on the outside as like a ring of flowers that open up and you can kind of tell that just by looking at it but also you'll notice that the bees and insects will just be on the areas where the flowers are open and then as the flower gets older and progresses and the inside ones open up then you'll just see them on the middle of the flower which is quite cool and now that the middle has opened up we'll cut this off and cook it up first of all i'm just rubbing all these little flowers off and i will be keeping these parts as well to do something with them later on so i'll just put them into a paper bag and leave them somewhere to dry you can see the seeds closer to the middle are less mature than the outer ones and that's totally normal and it looks good so i'll coat this in some olive oil and just rub that all around and i'm just putting on a bit of salt as well and i'm placing these onto my barbecue grill to cook it in a way that i can eat it a bit like a cob of corn while these cook away let's make a quick topping to put on top of these so from the garden i'm grabbing a bit of chilli and some coriander and in a bowl squeezing in some lemon juice a bit of mayo and we'll get the coriander chopped up and the chili and get that all in there i'm also adding a bit of garlic too and giving it all a stir and i like things spicy so i'm putting in some paprika as well but let's go and check on how those sunflower heads are doing okay so the smaller one is looking really good and you can see the back of it kind of going a bit translucent and the really green color has gone and the seeds are looking good and done as well so that one should be good to try out the other one still has a bit of that raw green color on the back though so i'll leave that one in for another couple of minutes all right so let's just spread that dressing around on there and can't forget a bit of pepper and some salt plus a bit of fresh coriander or cilantro depending on where you're from all right guys let's give this a taste maybe i'll start just by trying a bit that hasn't got any of the sauce on to see what they're like on their own on its own it is a little bit fibrous and it tastes very much like sunflowers if you know the smell of them then that's what that's basically what it tastes like it's likely to be more fibrous around the edges where the seeds are more mature let me try the middle with all the flavors and see what that's like damn that is really good especially in the middle where the seeds are even more sort of tender and they sort of melt in the mouth more but there's still a decent amount of kind of crunch and texture and there's sort of the stuff underneath that is a little bit softer which adds another sort of element of texture which is pretty nice the sauce is pretty spicy i do like spicy stuff though luckily and it kind of masks that almost perfume-like sunflower taste that i got when it was just on its own and you can do all sorts of flavors with these as well you know you could do sun-dried tomatoes and basil pesto or you could do something like cheesy garlic with herbs there's really endless things and flavors that you could do with these i reckon if you've got some sunflowers going it's worth having a go and seeing if you like it that's pretty good okay so if you remember the disc florets that we saved from the sunflowers well they are dry now and they're in this jar they look kind of cool and so we're going to make some tea out of these and this is thought to be effective in relieving sore throats and even malaria symptoms i quite like adding a bit of honey to mine but you could also add some herbs as well let's see how it tastes it's got like a nice light and fresh flavor and of course a bit of honey flavor in there as well so i quite like it and it's just such an easy way to save some of your own tea straight from the garden i'm honestly not sure how this next one will turn out but supposedly you can eat a sunflower bud before it opens up and use it a bit like an artichoke but one thing you could do if you wanted to grow these for the buds is to choose a variety that has multiple flower buds on the one plant and that way you can still enjoy some of the flowers even if you've already harvested some of the buds to eat so i haven't made time to cook this up yet and it's been sitting in my fridge for about a week and as you can see it's starting to open up so not ideal we'll cook it up anyway and we'll see how it turns out so first off i'm just chucking this into some boiling water and i'm gonna leave it in there for about three to four minutes all right so you can see that the water has really started to change color now and i have seen another video where they basically said to tip the water out and then put new water in it and let it boil for a bit longer so we're going to do that and i'll leave it for a few more minutes so poking the back with a knife it does seem like it's cooked i'm not entirely sure this will be my first time trying this so i'll just peel all of these sort of outer leaves off it and i'm just going to cut all of the flowers off the front i don't think you would need to do this if you had a bud that was younger so this one's probably not the ideal example so you can see that this isn't super tender because it is a bit old but we'll cut it up chuck on some salt and pepper and give it a taste interesting i definitely think i could have cooked it for a bit longer the flavor it's not terrible but it's not amazing either so it's kind of a little bit nutty but there is a little bit of lingering bitterness i think had i cooked it a bit longer it would have boiled a bit more of the bitterness out of it and made it a bit sort of softer and nicer to eat and i think also the fact that this was a bit of an older flower bud wasn't ideal for this but a younger one would definitely i think be a lot more tender and possibly just a lot nicer to eat learn from my mistakes and hopefully you'll get something that resembles more of what an artichoke is and you'll be able to use it just like an artichoke and things like pizza or pasta or something like that the wind is really blowing today we're having a hundred kilometer per hour gusts and luckily these are still standing and going strong i think it's because the seeds haven't developed yet on these ones so they're not too top heavy in another area i've got these sunflowers too but they've ended up being completely flattened these ones were a bit further along in their growth and quite top-heavy with developed seeds and their roots have just been completely lifted out of the ground but that's all good i'm going to harvest these seed heads and usually you want to see that the back of the heads are turning a yellowy or tan colour with all of the ray flowers having fallen off as well so ideally these could have had a bit longer but i'll hang these to dry and i'm sure they'll be fine i reckon the most satisfying part of doing this is rubbing off the disc florets i don't know why but there's just something about it and it's amazing to reveal the seeds underneath which look really incredible and you might notice they appear to be arranged in a very specific way forming spirals going both ways and these spirals are a cool example of the fibonacci sequence or the golden ratio and if you don't know what that is the fibonacci sequence is a series of numbers that goes something like 1 1 2 3 5 8 and so on where each number represents the sum of the previous two and if we count these spirals you'll see that there are 34 going one way and 55 going the other way and these are both numbers that appear back to back in the fibonacci sequence some sunflowers will have a different number of spirals but they'll almost always match a pair of consecutive fibonacci numbers it's not just sunflowers though you'll find these numbers and other things too like the amount of petals or seeds on many different types of flowers or the number of spirals on pine cones pineapples and aloes just to name a few it's a pretty fascinating and deep topic to get into but i love diving deep into things because i guess i'm a curious guy and i'm pretty sure you guys must be as well and that's why you enjoy watching my content but what's cool is that today's sponsor knows how curious we all are and is filling that need with a bunch of really interesting content which i reckon you guys would love to check out so they're called curiosity stream and they're a really cool streaming service a bit like netflix but for nerds and i think it's awesome because i actually love spending my time watching documentaries and taking in content in really interesting ways which is what i try and do with my content as well so they've got thousands of high quality documentaries and non-fiction shows on many topics like nature science history technology and recently i really enjoyed watching one called the kingdom how fungi made our world which talked about the relationships that fungi have with plants and the incredible role that they played in evolution which was pretty amazing and i also watched one called nature's mathematics which is where i learned a bit more about the fibonacci sequence which of course i find pretty fascinating there's so much cool stuff on there to check out and there's really something for everyone and you can stream it anywhere in the world from any device we've got a special offer for you as well so if you sign up with my code the kiwi grower you'll get an entire year for just 14.99 which is an incredible deal so you'll find the link below and thanks to curiositystream and all of you for supporting the channel all right so the sunflower seeds that we harvested earlier have dried out now so i'm going to get into these and get the seeds out you can of course do lots of different things with the seeds but i do know a lot of people don't really bother because of the annoyance of having to remove them from the shells but there are still a lot of great uses for them the way i wanted to show you though is a great way to get a lot of nutrition out of the seeds without having to get the shells off the seeds first and that's by growing your own micro greens which is actually a really simple process most of the time people use black oil sunflower seeds for growing microgreens but it's totally fine just to use other types that you've grown in your garden so i'm starting mine by soaking them in some water and weighing them down with a glass so they all become fully submerged after around four hours of soaking i'm preparing a few trays of seed raising mix and leveling it out and just packing it down now i'll just spread the seeds around fairly thickly but not so thick that they pile up too much on top of each other i'm packing the seeds down and then giving them a good water and now i'll just stack the trays and put some wet cardboard on the top weighed down with some wood this will keep the seeds in a nice dark and moist environment for sprouting and having the pressure weighing them down helps the seeds push their roots down and stabilize resulting in stronger seedlings after leaving them somewhere dark for around four days i'm putting them in the sunlight to continue developing further sometimes at this stage you can get some mold happening and when i've had this i just pick out the worst of it and then spray them with some white vinegar that i've heavily diluted with water and doing that and making sure they're somewhere with good airflow usually sorts it out pretty easily as these grow i just keep them watered as needed and i just brush the tops as well every day or two just to help remove the seed hulls and i just pick off any that are a bit more difficult as well so after seven days of being in the sunlight these are ready to harvest and they taste better before they develop their first set of true leaves which is what comes after these two little seed leaves that they develop first they've got a really good crunchy texture and the flavor is kind of maybe a little bit nutty but honestly like everything else it kind of tastes like sunflowers and tastes like a nice crispy green and these are just so full of vitamins and minerals as well especially since they're picked so fresh and i think it's just such a great way to get so much more out of your sunflower seeds than you would if you were just to eat the seed on its own so once the sunflowers are done the plants themselves can be a really helpful resource out in the garden and of course you could just compost them if you want to use them up that way but today we're going to use the stalks and the leaves in two different ways so let's go through and remove all the leaves and use those up first the leaves are getting pretty old now but when the leaves are younger and fresher some people saute them in a similar way to spinach and even bake them into chips like you would with kale i'm not going to try them like that this time around but if you have let me know in the comments what you thought of it i'd be interested to see if it's worth trying out so sunflowers produce a pretty decent amount of biomass and this is pretty useful material to chop and drop onto the garden to help them break down i'm just chopping them up a bit first and then just spreading them like mulch around some of the plants in the food forest and it's always good to add organic material to break down over time to improve the soil much like the wood chips that we've put down as well and side note those wood chips have really helped to develop good fungal networks which provide so many benefits to the plants and trees the rest of the sunflower plants are not only good for taking your anger out on but believe it or not the thick stalks make really good garden stakes and i'll show you how strong they are in just a second but i just cut them off at the base leaving the root system in to decompose and then i'll just leave the stalk somewhere to dry out in the sun so these have been drying for about six weeks now and it's crazy to see how strong these have actually become they're very very durable and they've almost turned into like a wood it's really lightweight as well and super strong if you try and snap it it's actually really hard to snap and so what you can do with these is just make like little structures or teepees things like that to grow your plants up like beans or peas something like that would be pretty handy in the garden and of course these aren't going to last forever but in the meantime they can be a really helpful resource and at the end of their life you can just compost them and then grow some more another use for the dried stalks is to use them as kindling to start a fire and i've found them to be really good for this i have saved a bunch of seeds to grow more sunflowers next year and some for the chickens of course which they love and while this video has been all about sunflowers i hope whatever you are growing are able to have a bit of an experiment with and try out some different things but anyway thanks so much for watching hope you have a great day and i'll see you in the next one

Channel: TheKiwiGrower

Views: 168,254

Keywords: thekiwigrower, the kiwi grower, food forest, 7 Curious Ways To Get The Most Out Of Sunflowers, growing sunflowers, sunflower growing, how to grow sunflowers, sun flower, summer gardening, eating a sunflower head, cooking with sunflowers, how to cook a sunflower, are sunflowers edible, sunflower tea, sunflower microgreens, what to do with sunflowers gardening, garden, blonde garden guy, sunflower seeds, fibonacci, sunflowers and fibonacci, uses for sunflowers, how to grow

Id: CHTQC2oWTtU

Length: 14min 50sec (890 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 15 2022