[Crops 101] How To Sow & Harvest Sunflowers

Welcome to your next "Crops 101" lesson of the Farming Simulator Academy! This time, we’re focusing on sunflowers to bring some color to your fields. In this tutorial, we show you how to plant, harvest, and use sunflowers.

What Is Special About Sunflowers?

• You can feed sunflowers to your pigs.
• Beehives near the sunflower field increase the yield.
• You can chop sunflowers into chaff and produce silage.
• Silage is used as an ingredient for TMR which is fed to cows.
• For chaff, harvest sunflowers between August and September.

What You Need For Sunflowers

Already have everything you need? Then you can move straight to the field. Otherwise, prepare the following equipment:

• Tractor: Used to operate the tools needed for field preparation, planting, and crop care.
• Cultivator: Prepares the field before planting.
• Planter: Plants sunflowers and needs to be filled with seeds.
• Fertilizer spreader: Applies fertilizer and, depending on the model, lime.
• Hoe: Removes weeds and helps prevent a yield penalty.
• Harvester with a sunflower header: Harvests the ripe sunflowers. For chaff use a forage harvester.
• Trailer: Transports your harvested sunflowers.

Let's Get To Work!

If seasonal growth is enabled, plant sunflowers in March or April. They will be ready for harvest between October and November.

Step 1: Applying lime

Check the field information to see whether lime is required. If so, fill a compatible fertilizer spreader with lime and cover the entire field.

Step 2: Cultivating the field

Prepare the soil with a cultivator. Before you start, check the field information to see whether plowing is required instead. If it is, use a plow and work the entire field before planting.

Need a refresher? See how field preparation works.

Step 3: Planting sunflowers

Fill your planter with seeds and select sunflowers as the crop. Lower and activate the planter, then cover the entire field.

New to planters? Here's our planting guide.

Step 4: Fertilizing

Apply fertilizer to improve your yield. You can fertilize twice during one crop cycle, but there needs to be another growth stage between both applications.

Tip! With a manure or slurry spreader, you can activate the double application rate to reach full fertilization with one application.

Want the full rundown? Read our fertilizing guide.

Step 5: Removing weeds

Weeds may appear while your sunflowers are growing. Remove them early with a weeder. Once the weeds become larger, you need a hoe or herbicide instead.

Want to know more about weed control?

Step 6: Harvesting sunflowers

When the sunflowers are ready between October and November, attach a suitable sunflower header or corn header to your combine harvester. Lower and activate the header, then harvest the entire field. If you want chaff instead, harvest earlier between August and September with a forage harvester and forage header.

Step 7: Selling and using sunflowers

Load the harvested sunflowers into a trailer. You can sell them directly, store them in a silo for later, feed them to pigs, or deliver them to an oil mill for processing.

Processing Sunflowers: Products

Instead of selling sunflowers directly, you can process them into sunflower oil. Deliver them to the oil mill, start the production, and sell the finished oil afterwards.

Well Done!

Congratulations! You now know the basics of growing sunflowers in Farming Simulator. When you're ready, continue with the next Farming Simulator Academy lesson!