Harvesting Sunflower Seeds

Last year, Room 12 planted six sunflower seeds.  Over the spring and summer these have bloomed and grown taller than everyone in the class.  We now have four huge flower heads to harvest.

Mr Peacock searched the Internet for instructions on harvesting the seeds.  We read some instructions on WikiHow and watched a Youtube video to be sure the information we had was correct.

Today we cut the flower heads off the stalks.   Each flower head is actually made up of hundreds of little flows each with its own seed at the base.  Room 12 people from 2015 remember how the bees pollenate the ova by carrying pollen from different sunflowers and this allows the ova (egg) to turn into a seed that will germinate.

We will dry them inside to protect them from the birds and the wet weather.  We have to tie them up and hang them inside paper bags to catch the seeds are they fall out.