today on Steve Robb reviews I'm going to review how exactly do you dry and store your sunflower
seeds that you harvest in the fall check this out let's get to it right now well let's start off at
this right here this is ordinary mesh that you would get out of a screen door and check these
out can you hear that you can actually hear when they're nice and dry this took me a week to dry
I put them out in the driveway in the Sun and you could see the difference between the bottom
of the wheel barrel and here is a nice air gap and I just let them be out here and dry nice and
then I harvest them and I seal them up and I'll show you how I do that and some flower seeds if
you package them properly are good for up to five years to plant in your garden guys filled
this bucket here and there it is right there now when you're trying to save your seeds one thing I
like to do is you really can't tell by looking at these seeds what's on them there could be
bugs there could be you name it on the seeds themselves I don't like to bring them inside
the house the way they are and in the last video I showed how I actually harvest the
the heads themself how I cut them off and how I cut the plants off if you want to put a link
down below if you haven't seen that one before but I'm going to show you the next step that
you do with this and I am going to plant these up at my off grid cabin up in Northern Ontario
right across the whole back of the field I think it's going to look terrific other thing you have
to do now is work the ground up and plant the seeds but I'm going to show you what I do the
last step after I take all the seeds out of the seed head and then let them sit like I said for
about a week in the Sun now I use a wheel barrel because it's easy it's a big enough surface and
depending on the weather you can wheel it in and out easy enough you don't have to worry about
if it's going to rain how do you bring it all in and it dries a lot better when you have this much
of an air gap underneath your wheel barrel you know with the the mesh from like a screen door
or that kind of mesh you can get the aluminum like I have or just go with the I guess it's
plastic or vinyl screening but let's get to the storage part and I'll show you exactly what I do
as easy as that okay guys check it look at this is that enough seats for you or what guys this
is the only way to go with the vacuum sealer I've been doing this for years and years with seeds and
you know what I was mentioning before about the bugs and everything else yes you will get some
specific type of bugs don't ask me which ones but they will be on the outside and they will
just have to inside your house anyways this way here eliminates the bugs keeps everything nice
and fresh I know some of you are gonna say to me Steve why don't you just go and buy a big bag of
birdseed some flower seeds that they sell you know in the stores in the fall for the birds I've tried
that hold on guys I've tried that and for some reason they don't germinate and I'm thinking the
reason why is they probably process them in a big tumbler on a high heat to dry them fast not like
what I'm doing and maybe it's something similar to like potatoes I've seen quite a few fellas
on YouTube trying to grow potatoes they go to the store they buy a bag of potatoes they don't
realize that a lot of them potatoes have been subjected to a chemical dip yes they wash all
the potatoes you don't get potatoes with dirt on them data but they're washed and then they
subject them to a chemical dip to to stop them from sprouting you know it's not toxic or anything
it's just to prevent them from sprouting and long term storage I don't know if they do this across
the world everywhere but in many places up here in Canada yes they do that for long term storage
so that they don't all sprout so I'm thinking the same thing with the sunflower plants I'd be
interested to know if any of you have ever went to the store and bought a 50-pound bag of sunflower
seeds and try and plant them I've tried it guys they won't grow so you know and I like doing
it this way myself now this particular brand of sunflowers that I got were called King Kong now
they're probably a hybrid and whenever you take seeds from a high-bred you're not guaranteed to
get the same flower or plant you know it's going to be a sunflower plant but it's not going to be
exactly the same one because a lot of sunflower plants and other plants are combined with other
varieties to make you know one particular style of plant now the sunflower heads that I had were all
about 14 16 inches across and it took about 12 to get this many so I just picked the best ones
and the rest I just feed to the birds so thanks for joining me here today and I hope you found
this interesting and yeah the vacuum sealer is the way to go just guys take care of Maui Cheers