Drying sunflower heads for wild birds?

I don't know where to post this, so I'm posting it here.

Here's the story:

We feed sunflower seeds to our bird buddies through our long winter. The ones they drop/lose grow all over the place, and the goldfinches and pine siskins love them before they fly south. It's now a perpetual system, provided there's enough disturbed soil for the sunflowers to sprout.

The chickadees and nuthatches remain through the winter -- and bring us great joy. With the "sunflower tree" type, we just cut the stalk and hang it from a string in the trees. The birds might not want it now, but they certainly will in the depths of February.

There are always some single-head sunflowers in the mix. These can be a foot across. I have yet to find a good method of drying them so I can put them out in the winter. They have a dense rind on the back of the seed head, and I cut that off to expose the spongy stuff so they will dry out. Otherwise they rot, or become so tough that the birds can't pick out the seeds. Part of the problem is that due to our short season the inner seeds are not fully formed so they are stuck in pretty tight.

Anybody have a better method?

I wonder, if the seeds are not mature are they doing the birds any good? Is there enough meat there?

By the way, your method sounds a lot like mine. I have bought seeds and planted them, years ago, and now I just sort of ignore them among my other plants. They reseed naturally. This year I made an effort to encourage them and ended up shading out just about everything else in that garden. But it was pretty.

Thom Bri wrote:I wonder, if the seeds are not mature are they doing the birds any good? Is there enough meat there?

Good question. There is good seed, undried, in the outer rim of the sunflower head but the inner half is probably not useful.

I am severely disinclined to drop these on the ground and fuel an increase of the local rodent population. We are already at war, and a ruthless reckoning is immanent.

I note that much of the inner half has been pollinated and has not gone mouldy, so it may be viable as seed even if not for bird feed.

If you're only doing the heads, and not the whole stalk, you could, after taking off the back, put them in the oven at the lowest possible temp - preferably under 110°, to keep it 'raw' and only dry it out. If your oven doesn't go that low, try turning it on, let it heat to it's lowest temp, then put the head(s) in, and leave the oven door open an inch or so. If needed, you can stick a something in the door to block it open. Then, just leave it overnight. It should cut your ding time, drastically.