These short-statured sunflowers are tailor-made for Alaska summers. The Midnight Sun-flowers are a hybrid that has been developing and growing at the UAF Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station since 1993, when researchers planted a sunwheat variety (a dwarf hybrid sunflower) and collected seeds from the earliest maturing heads. Those seeds were hand-threshed, cleaned and planted the following season, where they repeated the process. This continued for another 16 years before researchers unofficially released the ‘Midnight Sun-flower’ variety in 2008 as a potential crop for locally grown oilseed for the wild birdseed markets.
Midnight Sun-flowers were developed to thrive in cool temperatures and long daylight hours and produce lots of seeds. They grow about 24 inches tall and have a flower head approximately 6 inches in diameter. Their small stature allows the plant to mature early and put more energy into making ripe seeds at harvest.
These seeds can be used as bird seed with about 40% polyunsaturated oil and 18% crude protein. The oil can be extracted and is a common food product and is also used in making soaps and paints. The oil cake meal, which is what’s leftover after oil extraction, can be used as a livestock feed. Finally, the seeds can simply be eaten raw or roasted for a tasty snack.
The golden yellow petals add vibrant blooms to landscapes and attract many different insect pollinators. Each of the hundreds of flowers in a sunflower head produces one seed. Because sunflowers are open-pollinated (pollinated naturally, by insects in this case, rather than human intervention), flowers could be fertilized with pollen from a different type of sunflower. Seeds from those flowers could produce sunflower plants that don’t quite look the same.
Growing and harvesting Midnight Sun-flowers
Seeds can be direct seeded into the soil when it warms to 50 degrees at planting depth. Poke a small hole about 1 ½ inches deep, drop a couple of seeds in and cover the hole with soil. Plant seeds 4 to 6 inches apart. Thin to one sunflower per spot when they are still in the seed leaf stage.
If starting inside, plant a couple of seeds in each cell early in April and maintain good soil moisture. After they have germinated, thin down to one plant per cell. Harden them off and transplant them at the same time as the rest of the garden.
Germination should occur within 7 to 14 days of planting. Water and weed at the same time as the rest of the garden
These sunflowers are mature when the backs of the heads have turned from green to yellow and the bracts have turned brown (on average of 83 days from planting). To continue ripening the seeds after harvest, dry the heads by tying a few of the cut stems together and hanging them upside down in a warm dry place for a couple of weeks.
The seed can then be threshed out by hand. Wear a pair of leather gloves, and rub the seeds from the head into an open container. Alternatively, the dried heads, with the seeds still attached can be placed outside as a bird feeder.
Bob Van Velduizen, retired agronomy research assistant at AFES, was one of the researchers who developed the Midnight Sun-flower variety and provided the information written here.
