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Western Nebraska | We are a ways north of Gary in the Nebraska panhandle. Our sunflowers are planted after a second year of wheat and we put no fertilizer down. We used to put a popup down, but couldn't see any benefit to it so we stopped. Because of the speedy breakdown of residue we have to have a really good thatch layer going into sunflowers or the ground will move after the flowers come off. Our populations just aren't high enough to get adequate erosion control from the sunflower residue.
A few questions to ask before you start into sunflowers: Do you have any swamps, feedlots or other areas where blackbirds like to congregate? If you do you could have a lot of trouble with them cleaning you out. Second question to ask is how deep your soil is. Sunflowers like a really deep soil. They will root eight to ten feet deep, so if you have three feet of soil and then hit rock don't expect them to perform very well. We have a sandy loam soil that is at least eight foot deep or more. The 'flowers do real well from a quality standpoint in our area. Our yields are in the same range that Gary wrote of, but the quality, especially confections is always outstanding. I don't think we have ever seen below a 70% large screening. Most of the large seed also hits jumbo size, which, unfortunately we don't get paid for. Another thing to consider is your rotation. If you have any beans in the rotation I would be real cautious about your usage of 'flowers. They are susceptible sclerotinia, white mold, head rot, and a number of other fungal diseases. Many of these will also affect beans.
We are probably going to start looking into some fertilization because the longer we are in continuous crop no-till the bigger yields we are seeing. I am starting to think that as the biological processes start ramping up we will probably start seeing some response to fertilizer. At this point I have nothing quantifiable to base that statement on, beyond what has happened in our wheat and millet yields. We are seeing consistently higher yields in more unfavorable growing conditions than we have ever seen before. Since we are relatively new at the no-till thing (10+yrs) I don't think we have began to scratch the surface of what is possible with proper cropping systems.
Right now the market is so short of 'flowers that it is real hard not to make money. The last price we got was for oils going into the dehull market at $35/cwt. They have to grade a certain size to hit that market, but if they do you can pay off all your debts with that check.
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Sunflowers
