Growing Sunflowers: From History to Cultivation

By Jack Lazor
Published on October 31, 2013
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The benefit of growing sunflowers at home goes far beyond the beautiful flowers, try making your own sunflower oil for  an added perk.
The benefit of growing sunflowers at home goes far beyond the beautiful flowers, try making your own sunflower oil for an added perk.
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“The Organic Grain Grower” by Jack Lazor provides information on wide-ranging topics, from nutrient density and building soil fertility to machinery and grinding grains for livestock rations.
“The Organic Grain Grower” by Jack Lazor provides information on wide-ranging topics, from nutrient density and building soil fertility to machinery and grinding grains for livestock rations.

The ultimate guide to growing organic grains on a small and ecological scale, The Organic Grain Grower (Chelsea Green, 2013), is invaluable for both home-scale and commercial producers interested in expanding their resiliency and crop diversity through growing their own grains. In this excerpt from chapter 16, Oilseeds, longtime farmer and organic pioneer Jack Lazor covers growing sunflowers, starting with their agricultural history and finishing with the production of sunflower oil.

You can purchase this book from the MOTHER EARTH NEWS store:The Organic Grain Grower.

History of the Sunflower

Like corn and dry beans, the sunflower (Helianthus annuus) is native to North America, and was first domesticated by Native Americans in Arizona and New Mexico around 3000 bc. They cultivated the sunflower for its seeds, which they pounded into meal for cakes, mush, and bread; the oil from the seeds was rubbed onto their skin and hair. Spanish explorers first encountered these strikingly beautiful plants early in the sixteenth century on their forays northward into what was to become the American Southwest. By 1550, sunflowers had been brought back to Spain and Mediterranean Europe for use as an ornamental flower, and the culture then spread eastward to Egypt, India, and Russia. In 1716, the English patented a process for squeezing oil from sunflower seeds. The Russians, however, deserve credit for turning sunflowers into a food crop.

Russian Influence

Olive oil was the natural choice for cooking in Southern Europe because the olive tree was so well suited to the warm, arid climate of the Mediterranean basin. But Russia was not blessed with the same climate, which meant that it had to import oil from the south. When Russians discovered that copious amounts of oil could be pressed from sunflower seeds, the crop took the country by storm. By the eighteenth century, sunflowers were being extensively cultivated in Russia as an oilseed crop. Peter the Great was a great champion of sunflowers, and the Russian Orthodox Church forbade the consumption of all oils except sunflower during Lent. There is historic evidence of commercial oil production in Russia as early as 1769. Russian farmers and plant breeders should be given credit for selecting and improving sunflowers and turning them into a field crop. Yields and standability increased at the same time as a sunflower oil industry developed. By the nineteenth century, Russia had become a major exporter of sunflower oil to Europe; two million acres of sunflowers were being grown there at the time. Some of the sunflower varieties that we grow in our gardens today, like Mammoth Russian and Black Giant, were actually developed centuries ago north of the Black Sea in Russia. These varieties were rather noteworthy at the time because of their almost two-foot-diameter seed heads.

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