[Image description: small black seeds attached to white fluff have taken the place of the purple flowers that adorned this Sweet Joe Pye Weed]

I’m out collecting seeds from some Sweet Joe Pye Weed (Eutrochium purpureum) with our newborn in a wrap, rockin’ that Kuato vibe pretty hard.

If you haven’t yet, pop over to this pinned thread to shout out a nursery that you’ve had a good experience with, possibly even one that’s local to your area.

What’s growing on with you all?

  •  xylem   ( @xylem@beehaw.org ) 
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    33 months ago

    Harvested my sunflower heads this week! I probably waited a bit too long since they had worms and a bit of mold, but lesson learned for next time. I took all the seeds out, sorted out the bad ones, and I’m going to let them dry for a while longer in mesh bags before roasting and shelling or whatever.

    Any advice on processing sunflowers?

    • I’m a little surprised your local birds let them get to that stage, to be honest! I’ve only threshed them once, for reseeding purposes, but did so with ¼" hardware cloth, framed with 2" sides, over a wheelbarrow. The mesh catches the seeds but lets the duff fall through with a little agitation. Otherwise I’ve hung them upside down within reach of the birds we raise for them to enjoy.

  • Have any of you seen hollow joe pye (Eutrochium fistulosum) in the wild? It gets absolutely enormous, I’ve seen it 8-9’ tall and supposedly it can exceed 11’ in height. I want to get some for my garden but I suspect unless I really crowd it like it would be in its native environment, it’ll get really tall and get knocked over by the wind.

    • Can you dedicate a few square feet / a square meter in the garden for a few transplants? Having clustered colonies of these tall plants has treated us well, and if you’re doing the starts yourself it’s easy enough to multisow a few cells to get a head start.