Sunflowers and harvesting

[Takn4aFool]

16 hours ago, dale560 said:

Here is a picture of that big harvester in Ukraine doing sunflowers. They yield good over there but just modern practices and they could double .

video of that system

 

[SDman]

1 hour ago, acem said:

Will an 844 corn header harvest them or will they pull through?

The few that were harvested round here were cut with a ridged header.

Ace, guys have harvested sunflowers with corn heads in the past around here, but it’s not recommended. Around here, they are harvested after a killing frost most years; once the stalks are dead and the plant has dried down, the heads are prone to shelling very easily(you can walk up to a sunflower head, smack it with an open hand, and half the seeds will fall out on their own). Now, in your part of the world where the plants don’t get killed by a frost, a corn head may work just fine. Since the plant/head is probably still alive, the seeds probably will stay in the head much better. 
 

Here’s some pictures of different sunflower harvesting headers we’ve had on our lot through the years. 

[acem]

Are those just pans attached to a std header? I've got an extra ridged header...

What about using milo guards on a ridged head..

They would harvest before frost. Would they be high moisture and need to be dried?

Thx-Ace 

[dale560]

2 hours ago, twostepn2001 said:

A friend of mine raised sunflowers for several years. This is the header he had on his IH 915.  Built in Lubbock, Texas.

Suprising the 915 didn’t start on fire like the 1460. Sunflower dust gathered around engine on 1460 all the time and you needed to clean it off. A good maintenance was to blow them off every few hours. The 915 with covered engine seem to blow the dust through engine compartment.

[SDman]

1 hour ago, acem said:

Are those just pans attached to a std header? I've got an extra ridged header...

What about using milo guards on a ridged head..

They would harvest before frost. Would they be high moisture and need to be dried?

Thx-Ace 

Yes, that middle picture is what is referred to as pans around here as well. They are usually in 9” or 12” spacing. Guys that do custom work like them as they can do a variety of row widths with them. If you do have an extra straight head, they work pretty decent. 
 

As far as drying sunflowers, that’s avoided like the plague around here…just too risky as sunflowers are highly flammable to work with. Not sure on the exact #s, but I believe they start harvesting sunflowers at around 15-17% or so. When they get below 9-10%, that’s when the fire problems start around here. 
 

Milo guards don’t work very well on sunflowers unless they have completely fallen over…which turns into a real mess to combine. 

[dale560]

2 hours ago, SDman said:

Yes, that middle picture is what is referred to as pans around here as well. They are usually in 9” or 12” spacing. Guys that do custom work like them as they can do a variety of row widths with them. If you do have an extra straight head, they work pretty decent. 
 

As far as drying sunflowers, that’s avoided like the plague around here…just too risky as sunflowers are highly flammable to work with. Not sure on the exact #s, but I believe they start harvesting sunflowers at around 15-17% or so. When they get below 9-10%, that’s when the fire problems start around here. 
 

Milo guards don’t work very well on sunflowers unless they have completely fallen over…which turns into a real mess to combine. 

Those are picture perfect field of sunflowers

[SDman]

In regards to the whole process of raising sunflowers, I'll add some more info for you. 

First off, most guys here would probably tell you they don't intend to plant a lot of sunflowers most years....it just ends being that way many times. For many producers, sunflowers are a "crop of last resort" or a "fall back crop", if you will. In most years, they intend on planting spring wheat, corn, and soybeans first. If the planting window for these crops closes(generally around May 1 for spring wheat planting, May 20-25 for corn, June 10 or so for soybeans), then your options are sunflowers, millet, or milo/sorghum. 

Sunflowers are usually planted from around June 10 up to the end of June. I have seen flowers planted on the 4th of July that matured before a killing frost, but I wouldn't try that every year. Now, for some reason or another, the later you plant sunflowers(within reason), the higher the yield potential. When I was a kid in the 1980s, many sunflowers were planted in May; as time went on, guys were finding out that later-planted sunflowers would usually outyield early-planted sunflowers. I'm not an agronomist, but something to do with the "biological clock" in a sunflower plant kicks the reproductive part of the sunflower plant into high gear when it feels it is running short on time.

As far as other reasons for planting sunflowers, one big reason is that they need very little moisture to raise a crop. They have a huge taproot that can go down several feet in the ground to get moisture on a dry year. I refer to them as a South Dakota cactus. I've seen sunflowers receive less than 2" of moisture from the time they are planted until they are harvested, and still make 12-1500 lbs/acre for yield. Compared to corn/beans, they are a much cheaper crop to plant. Sunflowers also grow quickly....usually they can canopy the ground in 30 days or so. 

Dale's comment on bugs in sunflowers is 100% true. As one guy told me years ago, "With sunflowers, you are fighting bugs from the time you open the bag of seed until you deliver them to the elevator". Weevils, beetles, moths....they keep the spray plane pilots busy, especially when they are in full bloom like the picture above.

For those of you that are Harley-Davidson guys, sunflowers usually are in full bloom at the same time the Sturgis bike rally is going on....right around the second week of August. Its pretty common to see an out-of-state car pulled over alongside the road next to a sunflower field at that time....somebody is always taking pictures of a beautiful field of sunflowers. Unfortunately, that's about the only time sunflowers are beautiful....to me, anyway.

[dale560]

33 minutes ago, SDman said:

In regards to the whole process of raising sunflowers, I'll add some more info for you. 

First off, most guys here would probably tell you they don't intend to plant a lot of sunflowers most years....it just ends being that way many times. For many producers, sunflowers are a "crop of last resort" or a "fall back crop", if you will. In most years, they intend on planting spring wheat, corn, and soybeans first. If the planting window for these crops closes(generally around May 1 for spring wheat planting, May 20-25 for corn, June 10 or so for soybeans), then your options are sunflowers, millet, or milo/sorghum. 

Sunflowers are usually planted from around June 10 up to the end of June. I have seen flowers planted on the 4th of July that matured before a killing frost, but I wouldn't try that every year. Now, for some reason or another, the later you plant sunflowers(within reason), the higher the yield potential. When I was a kid in the 1980s, many sunflowers were planted in May; as time went on, guys were finding out that later-planted sunflowers would usually outyield early-planted sunflowers. I'm not an agronomist, but something to do with the "biological clock" in a sunflower plant kicks the reproductive part of the sunflower plant into high gear when it feels it is running short on time.

As far as other reasons for planting sunflowers, one big reason is that they need very little moisture to raise a crop. They have a huge taproot that can go down several feet in the ground to get moisture on a dry year. I refer to them as a South Dakota cactus. I've seen sunflowers receive less than 2" of moisture from the time they are planted until they are harvested, and still make 12-1500 lbs/acre for yield. Compared to corn/beans, they are a much cheaper crop to plant. Sunflowers also grow quickly....usually they can canopy the ground in 30 days or so. 

Dale's comment on bugs in sunflowers is 100% true. As one guy told me years ago, "With sunflowers, you are fighting bugs from the time you open the bag of seed until you deliver them to the elevator". Weevils, beetles, moths....they keep the spray plane pilots busy, especially when they are in full bloom like the picture above.

For those of you that are Harley-Davidson guys, sunflowers usually are in full bloom at the same time the Sturgis bike rally is going on....right around the second week of August. Its pretty common to see an out-of-state car pulled over alongside the road next to a sunflower field at that time....somebody is always taking pictures of a beautiful field of sunflowers. Unfortunately, that's about the only time sunflowers are beautiful....to me, anyway.

Sunflowers kept a lot of farmers alive up here in the mid 90s when wheat bottomed and wet weather really hit. Like you said a nice yellow field of sunflowers is very pretty but they do take a lot more work than other crops.

[TractormanMike.mb]

Around here somebody will try raising sunflowers once every ten years or so, and they only do it ONCE.

They are kind of a neat looking crop, I've been told that the flowers will actually follow the sun throughout the day.

[dale560]

7 minutes ago, TractormanMike.mb said:

Around here somebody will try raising sunflowers once every ten years or so, and they only do it ONCE.

They are kind of a neat looking crop, I've been told that the flowers will actually follow the sun throughout the day.

Yes and up here the heads are always curved East. I suppose the first sun in the morning and bud eventually gets to heavy to move.

[SDman]

2 hours ago, dale560 said:

Sunflowers kept a lot of farmers alive up here in the mid 90s 

Same here. Guys that raise sunflowers cuss raising them as a crop, but they will begrudgingly tell you that they are still the most consistent cash crop raised here year after year.

23 minutes ago, TractormanMike.mb said:

Around here somebody will try raising sunflowers once every ten years or so, and they only do it ONCE.

They are kind of a neat looking crop, I've been told that the flowers will actually follow the sun throughout the day.

That's one big difference between wild sunflowers(weeds) and domesticated sunflowers grown for a crop. Wild sunflowers will follow the sun from sunup to sundown. Domesticated ones follow the sun when the buds/flowers are small. Eventually the heads will get too big to follow the sun. Like Dale mentioned, domesticated flowers all face east eventually. Because of that, some guys try to plant sunflowers in a north/south direction so they feed better into the combine. Some guys feel that if you plant them east/west, you can have issues with the heads falling off the header when you are going west to east with the combine.

One other problem not mentioned with sunflowers.....birds, namely blackbirds, attack sunflower fields en masse. Back in the 1980s they used to use propane-powered cannons that would fire off gunshot sounds every so often to scare the birds away. That worked for 3-4 days or so, until the birds became accustomed to it. Seed companies came up with different varieties that would have the head of the sunflower end up upside down when the plant was mature so as to make it more difficult for birds. Birds can still be a problem, but it doesn't seem to be as big a problem as it used to be.

 

 

 

[acem]

If sunflowers are harvested before the frost will they dry down or are they still green?

You say you don't dry them. You mean with heat? I dry my rice with air only.

 

[augercreek]

19 hours ago, Takn4aFool said:

video of that system

That really took some fancy engineering!

 

[jimw]

 They do die and dry down . For me thou the time it didn’t freeze it took a long time . Think I was combining in Jan . You can’t combine them green. Even sort of green works the heck out of the combine 

[IH Forever]

18 hours ago, SDman said:

In regards to the whole process of raising sunflowers, I'll add some more info for you. 

First off, most guys here would probably tell you they don't intend to plant a lot of sunflowers most years....it just ends being that way many times. For many producers, sunflowers are a "crop of last resort" or a "fall back crop", if you will. In most years, they intend on planting spring wheat, corn, and soybeans first. If the planting window for these crops closes(generally around May 1 for spring wheat planting, May 20-25 for corn, June 10 or so for soybeans), then your options are sunflowers, millet, or milo/sorghum. 

Sunflowers are usually planted from around June 10 up to the end of June. I have seen flowers planted on the 4th of July that matured before a killing frost, but I wouldn't try that every year. Now, for some reason or another, the later you plant sunflowers(within reason), the higher the yield potential. When I was a kid in the 1980s, many sunflowers were planted in May; as time went on, guys were finding out that later-planted sunflowers would usually outyield early-planted sunflowers. I'm not an agronomist, but something to do with the "biological clock" in a sunflower plant kicks the reproductive part of the sunflower plant into high gear when it feels it is running short on time.

As far as other reasons for planting sunflowers, one big reason is that they need very little moisture to raise a crop. They have a huge taproot that can go down several feet in the ground to get moisture on a dry year. I refer to them as a South Dakota cactus. I've seen sunflowers receive less than 2" of moisture from the time they are planted until they are harvested, and still make 12-1500 lbs/acre for yield. Compared to corn/beans, they are a much cheaper crop to plant. Sunflowers also grow quickly....usually they can canopy the ground in 30 days or so. 

Dale's comment on bugs in sunflowers is 100% true. As one guy told me years ago, "With sunflowers, you are fighting bugs from the time you open the bag of seed until you deliver them to the elevator". Weevils, beetles, moths....they keep the spray plane pilots busy, especially when they are in full bloom like the picture above.

For those of you that are Harley-Davidson guys, sunflowers usually are in full bloom at the same time the Sturgis bike rally is going on....right around the second week of August. Its pretty common to see an out-of-state car pulled over alongside the road next to a sunflower field at that time....somebody is always taking pictures of a beautiful field of sunflowers. Unfortunately, that's about the only time sunflowers are beautiful....to me, anyway.

When I used to work in seed production I was in charge of distribution to MN, NE, SD, and ND.  I dealt with a lot of dealers in SD, one in Highmore actually who was a real gem.  But anyway I always hated sunflowers.  I'd have dealers with semi loads of soybeans on order but they'd want to wait until the last minute to ship.  If they were getting moisture in the spring they expected me to get them shipped ASAP.  If it was a dry year those orders for soybeans would suddenly get cancelled as they switched to sunflowers.  Made inventory management a pain in the a**.

[SDman]

19 hours ago, acem said:

If sunflowers are harvested before the frost will they dry down or are they still green?

You say you don't dry them. You mean with heat? I dry my rice with air only.

 

Like others have mentioned, you really don't want to harvest sunflowers before they are ready. As Dale alluded to, even perfectly good, dry flowers can still be a PITA to work with. When you are dealing with something that averages 30 lbs/bushel, it just doesn't like to flow no matter what you do. 

As far as drying with air, some guys do that when conditions call for it, but I would say most producers avoid it if they can. Most guys would just let them wait to dry down naturally; but, we are a much drier climate up north as compared to the humidity you folks generally deal with.

Some guys have dessicated sunflowers with Paraquat or something similar in some years if they feel the seeds are mature, but the stalks/heads are very green. I can't say its common, but I have seen it done in a pinch.

I will say about 1 year out of every 10 or so we run into what I consider a "dream situation" where the seeds/heads are dry, but the stalks still have some green to them. The reason I say it is a dream situation is because you don't have to worry about fires when combining sunflowers when the conditions are like this. No dust to worry about when they are like this. Although I agree with Jim above, running a lot of green stalks/heads through a combine will make the combine rumble. You have to remember, sunflowers are like running small trees through a combine.

I was doing some looking for some information on an attachment you can add to a corn head to make it work in sunflowers when I ran across this old article in a Farm Show magazine dated from 1991. I remember the Corn-Sol attachments mentioned here, but I can say they never caught on around here. I have no idea if any information mentioned here is still good or not anymore.

 

[SDman]

2 hours ago, Art From Coleman said:

This is true, if you go out and walk through a field of sunflowers after they have been combined, the stubble looks like you had combined a hedge.

That’s why a lot of tractors around here have some kind of stalk stomper setup in front of the tires/tracks if they work in sunflower stubble. Those stalks are very hard on tires/tracks. 

[acem]

Why do they cut the plants so low?

Cotton stalks are hard on tires. Cotton is actually a woody perennial in tropical climates but dies from cold here.

Thx

[hardtail]

Well SD is giving us a tutorial but I see what your saying if the stalks were longer, have a feeling is to pickup all the heads after freezing and drooping, might reduce trash that's hard to breakdown for next crop also?

[acem]

Waiting until after a killing frost is a poor plan here. That may happen in late October but typically November. We tend to be muddy by then.

If planted early they mature by labor day I'm told. It's still really hot and usually dry here then. That may dry the heads down. Rice, corn, milo, soybeans, etc will dry down here in our heat during August and September.

[SDman]

13 hours ago, acem said:

Why do they cut the plants so low?

Cotton stalks are hard on tires. Cotton is actually a woody perennial in tropical climates but dies from cold here.

Thx

Ace, I think those stalks are the outside round of that field. I'm thinking they were cut low that way as the trucks, grain carts, etc. are going to be running on that area of the field eventually. Probably done that way to avoid damage to the trucks/trailers in terms of stubble damage. A lucky stalk could end up poking a hole in a radiator or other cooler if it gets in the wrong place. Could also be due to some stalks falling over so they run the headers a little lower to pick up leaning/down stalks. Again, the outside round of the field would probably be more likely to have stalks damaged due to wind. Also, if you look at those stalks, you can see they are semi-green. That's about as green of a stalk you will see during sunflower harvest around here. That's when they are fun to combine....no dry dust for starting fires.

Now, one thing I would be concerned with sunflowers in your area is all the humidity. Like I've said before, sunflowers like dry conditions overall. Wet summers here tend to be the poorer years for flowers. Sunflowers can have mold issues with too much moisture....head mold, stalk mold/rot, etc. Also on wet years, the taproot may not go down in the ground very far, so the talks have a tendency to fall over as they are not anchored well. If you go an hour to the east of me, they get substantially more rainfall than we do....you rarely see sunflowers in that direction.

Question for you....do you raise a lot of milo/grain sorghum where you are at? Around here, milo and sunflowers tend to go hand in hand with hot/dry weather conditions. They thrive when corn & soybeans can't handle the hot/dry conditions. West of me is milo/sunflowers/wheat country, while everything to the east of me is the western edge of the corn belt. Big difference in moisture/conditions between the two areas.

On 3/14/2022 at 12:53 PM, IH Forever said:

When I used to work in seed production I was in charge of distribution to MN, NE, SD, and ND.  I dealt with a lot of dealers in SD, one in Highmore actually who was a real gem.  But anyway I always hated sunflowers.  I'd have dealers with semi loads of soybeans on order but they'd want to wait until the last minute to ship.  If they were getting moisture in the spring they expected me to get them shipped ASAP.  If it was a dry year those orders for soybeans would suddenly get cancelled as they switched to sunflowers.  Made inventory management a pain in the a**.

I'll give you one more example of why sunflowers are the crop of last resort. In 2016, we got a late killing frost on Memorial Day weekend. The entire wheat crop was killed due to the frost, and you were about to the point that the growing season would be too short for corn, and you would run out of time for soybeans to plant for regular acres as well as replanting failed wheat acres. Good, bad, or otherwise, everybody turned to sunflowers to salvage the year since there weren't a lot of other alternatives at that point. Just another example of how sunflowers broaden the planting window around here nearly every spring.

[acem]

There was alot of milo here when I was a kid. It grew well most years but in a wet year it was hard to dry down, not to often. The market for milo was the chicken feed mills. They stopped buying milo and only want corn now so everyone grows corn. However it's a bit dry here in most years for good corn without irrigation. In fact our extension service recommends corn if irrigated and milo if dryland. The last three years have been wet though.

A neighbor grew some sunflowers when I was a kid back in the 70s. They did fine.

I'm planning to grow them on my droughty ground.

Thx-Ace 

 

[bitty]

On 3/13/2022 at 12:57 PM, SDman said:

Ace, guys have harvested sunflowers with corn heads in the past around here, but it’s not recommended. Around here, they are harvested after a killing frost most years; once the stalks are dead and the plant has dried down, the heads are prone to shelling very easily(you can walk up to a sunflower head, smack it with an open hand, and half the seeds will fall out on their own). Now, in your part of the world where the plants don’t get killed by a frost, a corn head may work just fine. Since the plant/head is probably still alive, the seeds probably will stay in the head much better. 
 

Here’s some pictures of different sunflower harvesting headers we’ve had on our lot through the years. 

So my crazy side is thinking about this. The upper head here has only the trays as I will call them and the auger . I could hypothetically alter the head on my 205 antique combine to harvest a few acres of sunflowers ..... Or is there more to that head than meets the eye ? 

[dale560]

1 hour ago, bitty said:

So my crazy side is thinking about this. The upper head here has only the trays as I will call them and the auger . I could hypothetically alter the head on my 205 antique combine to harvest a few acres of sunflowers ..... Or is there more to that head than meets the eye ? 

 

1 hour ago, bitty said:

So my crazy side is thinking about this. The upper head here has only the trays as I will call them and the auger . I could hypothetically alter the head on my 205 antique combine to harvest a few acres of sunflowers ..... Or is there more to that head than meets the eye ? 

Yes if you have a sickle bar on header. The pans just bolt on with the guard hold down bolts. You could make pans out of plastic ,plywood or sheet metal for a small head.  You don’t need a reel for a few acres. The pans hold the stalks from vibrating and catch the shattered out seeds so they flow into header when raised up. A wide 25 inch pan works for straight rows planted on 30 inch. We ran 9 inch pans with a gap between every one but that spacing let it go down 30 inch rows. And combine the thick spaced ones on end rows or solid seeded flowers.

[bitty]

17 minutes ago, dale560 said:

 

Yes if you have a sickle bar on header. The pans just bolt on with the guard hold down bolts. You could make pans out of plastic ,plywood or sheet metal for a small head.  You don’t need a reel for a few acres. The pans hold the stalks from vibrating and catch the shattered out seeds so they flow into header when raised up. A wide 25 inch pan works for straight rows planted on 30 inch. We ran 9 inch pans with a gap between every one but that spacing let it go down 30 inch rows. And combine the thick spaced ones on end rows or solid seeded flowers.

So I take the sickle bar off or leave it on with the pans attached also. It's about a 9' head at the most, has reel . I can get a picture tomorrow if needed or wanted on here (everyone likes pictures)