Can you grow BOSS from BOSS?

[savingdogs]

I know it sounds dumb, but do they treat BOSS against sprouting?

I have thrown out literally thousands of seeds and never did a sunflower rise. There HAD to be some the chickens missed.

I'd like to grow some BOSS myself next year, but do I need a special source for these seeds or more fertile soil or what?

I have grown sunflowers quite well in the past but had no luck growing them here at our new farm at a high altitude. So that could also be the reason they did not sprout, I'm trying to figure out do the rest of you get sunflowers popping up?

 

[Wannabefree]

I have seen them come up from the regular feed type BOSS, and from wild bird feed. Must be the climate or soil. They generally volunteer around here.

 

[savingdogs]

This is marked as wild bird seed.

 

[freemotion]

Sometimes in a damp year or a rainy harvest, grains are dried using heat and this reduces or halts germination. I imagine sunflower seeds can be treated the same way. So unless you are buying specifically for seed, you may end up with a batch that is "cooked." But they don't waste the energy unless they have to, so normally, they should sprout.

They do sprout rather quickly, so you could test some by simply attempting to sprout them the way you would any other food-type sprout, then if they sprout, set some from that bag aside for planting. You might presoak them before planting this spring, like you might do with peas and beans. You can feed your test sprouts to your critters...they'll love them.

 

[savingdogs]

That is a good idea, but will it sprout this time of year?

 

[freemotion]

Yes, it should. I used to mix it with my grains for sprouting and it always sprouted before the oats and barley. I sprout through the winter. Well, year round now, but just in the winter my first couple of years.

 

[Wifezilla]

I got a nice harvest of BOSS from a plant that volunteered in a bed where I had tossed some quail bedding. The quail dont like boss so those seeds were in the bedding. Very pretty plants with easy to dry seedheads.

 

[SKR8PN]

What is BOSS??

 

[freemotion]

Black Oil Sunflower Seeds.

 

[SKR8PN]

Gotcha!! I was thinking it meant "bird only sunflower seeds"