Sunflowers are a joy all summer.. climbing to the sky, their large yellow heads following the track of the sun…

They are also a great attractor for pollinators, so I like to put a handful of them in the corner of the vegetable garden, where they act like a giant billboard calling the pollinators in and over to our vegetables.

Most years, the neighborhood squirrels get to the ripe heads full of seeds before I can. In the last decade, much of my summer vegetable gardening was done between work travel, squeezed in between plane hops and household chores. But in this year of COVID, I have been home every day, tending and loving the garden as a sort of meditation… and I claimed the sunflowers as a reminder of the garden to take me into the winter.

I had 9 plants that produced useable heads.. some larger than others. David helped to harvest the seeds from the dried heads and then dried them on screens for a few days….

As someone with POTS/EDS/NCS, I look for ways to increase my salt intake, so salted and roasted sunflowers in the shell are a huge treat. I decided to set some of the seeds aside for planting more next year, and then processed 12 C of seeds.

If you are someone who does better with video, check out this short montage of the roasting process :