I am wondering how to husk sunflower and pumpkin seeds to store for eating. It's one thing to do it by hand for a snack in the garden but on any sort of scale for the home there must be an easier way. I plant plenty of both each year and the chooks do ok but it's the families turn. What do others do?
Jackie, I have only ever tried to hull sunflower seeds. First I roasted them in the oven at about 100c for about 3/4 hour. [My oven is not very good so it could have been anything from 85c -120c]. I then put a thin layer on the bench and put a wooden breadboard on top and using a rolling pin I rolled them. Initial attempts at rolling direct or under paper faild. Any that were small and not split I seperated out and rolled later. One batch were not toasted/dry enough and tended to squash - back into the oven for them. The seeds were then put in a bucket and stirred with a wooden stick to knock the hulls off as many as I could. I seperated the hulls and seeds on a fly screen angled at about 45Degrees in front of a fan. I sorta helped out by pushing the seeds around. Any empty hulls were blown to the top and clean seed finished up at the bottom. A paint brush is really handy during this process. The final product was good with about 10% broken seed. I finished up with 2 large tomato paste jars full and a couple of buckets of hulls, unbroken seeds & a mess on the lawn. This was all produced from about 12 or so mid-sized heads. Mostly I grew sunflowers as an interest plant for the kids, rabbits and chooks.. floot
The best idea for pumpkin seeds to to grow "naked seed" pumpkins. We can get these in NZ from King's seeds (kingsseeds.co.nz). You can order from their website in case you can't get them locally.