* FREE SHIPPING ON ORDERS $10 OR MORE! *
This is our Doomsday Sunflower page. It tells about using sunflowers in a doomsday scenario.
Sunflowers are a must in an emergency situation. Their seeds are enjoyed as a snack by humans, with small seeds used as birdseed. Sunflower oil is used in cooking, paints, varnishes and plastics, soaps, detergents, surfactants, adhesives, fabric softeners and lubricants. The sunflower also shows potential as an alternate fuel source in diesel engines.
Their blooms attract bees and you know bees are a necessity for pollination of your garden plants. These bright flowers are generally easy to grow and come in a variety of sizes and colors, not just yellow.
One drawback is they will only grow when it is warm.
A cup of sunflower seeds has about 800 calories.
Based on a 2000 calorie diet, we would need about 3 cups of seeds per person per day if this was the only food you had to eat. (If you are a smart survivalist, you will have plenty of other seeds to grow for a decent diet for your family, right?)
The mammoth giant sunflower head will produce about 1/2 cup of seeds.
So to feed one person per day, one would need six heads per day.
This would mean in one year, one person would need 2120 plants per year.
For seed saving, we would need about 30 plants (100 seeds per head).
Let's say 3000 plants per year.
Following our 1/3 rule (1/3 for current planting, 1/3 for next year, and 1/3 for emergency) we would need to plant 3000 sunflower plants.
Survival Tip: Make sure you hide your seed caches in different places.
Seeds for eating can last for years just by keeping them dry.
Of course, you will need someway to remove the seeds from the hulls.
you have an oil extractor, you can grow sunflowers for oil. How many plants you
would need for this is beyond my ability to calculate, but if you keep reading I have given it a try.
The sunflower seed is the fruit of the sunflower. There are three types of commonly used sunflower seeds: linoleic, high oleic, and NuSun developed for sunflower oil. Each variety has its own unique levels of monounsaturated, saturated, and polyunsaturated fats.
The Peredovik is a Russian Heirloom that is an open pollinated type of sunflower that can be used for birdseed or sunflower oil production. It is the only open pollinated one we can find that can be used for oil. The others are all hybrids.
An acre of Peredovik will produce about 1200 pounds of sunflower seeds which can yield about 35 gallons of oil. Of course, what you actually end up with will depend on lots of things. This is about 15 to 25,000 plants.
Some say you can get three gallons of oil from 140 plants. This sounds a bit optimistic to me.
Sunflower oil can be extracted using chemical solvents or expeller pressing. Expeller pressing sunflower seeds under low-temperature conditions is a method that does not use chemical solvents to derive sunflower seed oil.
In a doomsday event, you will need some sort of manual presser. This can also be used for extracting oils from herbs and juices from from fruits and vegetables.
There are many types available.
David’s Garden Seeds®, gardening is our passion. We provide top quality,
non-GMO seeds so families can learn about gardening and love it. In turn, we
hope they will pass this passion down to their children and
grandchildren, teaching them to grow delicious food, fresh herbs and