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Grow Your Own Cooking Oil

Grow Your Own Cooking Oil
   You want to be more self sufficient? Well here's a way to grow your own cooking oil.

Sunflower Seeds
Place to grow sunflowers
Seed oil Extractor
(plastic bottle tubing small funnel wire screen strainer)
Glass Jars


 
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Step 1Step One: Sunflower Seeds Buying, Growing, Harvesting

Step One: Sunflower Seeds Buying, Growing, Harvesting
  There are two basic kinds of sunflowers, confectionery the kind you eat, and black oil. the kind you feed to birds.  The black oil sunflower seed is the kind you need. These have twice the amount of oil as the confectionery.  These seeds are easy found at almost anywhere. i bought this 40 pound bag. for $14.00.       This is enough seeds to grow as many sunflowers as you need. I used two flowerbeds on the back of the house and the back of my garage.
     And covered the beds with seeds, i had so many it was like a carpet of sunflower seeds.
  And that was it. Sunflowers grow like weeds they need little water, little room, and grow almost anywhere. And you can grow a large amount in a small space.
  Once they grow and there heads get big and full of seeds, you know when to harvest them when the pedals drop off and the head falls over. Cut off the head and store them in a plastic bucket until they dry out, then shake them the seeds come out pretty easily.
   at the end of summer you should have enough seeds to make cooking oil for the rest of the year.
Unless you deep fry a lot or something.
  But since i didn't want to wait a year to show you the seed oil extractor and how to use it i started grinding the oil out of what was left of the seeds i bought.


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21 comments
May 31, 2010. 8:07 PMbruc33ef says:
Good, very useful Instructable.  

I wonder how many years a 40 lb bag of seeds would last when used this way. Also, I wonder whether it would be cost-effective to simply extract the oil from the seeds from the bag rather than planting them first.  How much oil could you expect from a 40 lb bag of seed?

Jun 1, 2010. 11:33 AMSinAmos says:
This is totally up my alley.  Thanks.  I have three regular sunflowers growing for eating, but if I can pick up a bag, that would be nice.  Buying the tool is my only concern.  Not sure the price tag is worth it, but it could be. 
Jun 1, 2010. 3:10 PMtrailleadr says:
I would think it's more cost effective to grow a decent batch from your 40lb bag.  Since the sunflower will regrow each year you only need to plant the seeds one time.  Plus to ensure you get a decent harvest you can use the seed cake to fertilize your sunflower bed.
Jun 7, 2010. 9:05 PMbyoho says:
You don't need to wait 2 weeks for it to settle. Here's an old farmers/mechanics trick from WAY back that was often used to filter used lube and motor oils; Put a length of natural fiber rope, the thicker the better, in the unfiltered oil jar and let the other end dangle out and into another jar that's lower than the first. They used to use manila rope, but I imagine cotton would work too. The oil will siphon (actually the correct term would be capillary action) up, over, and down thru the rope and drip into the lower container, completely filtered. It won't happen fast, but it will be faster than 2 weeks. Nice job! Thanks
Feb 2, 2011. 8:12 AMdirk1609 says:
It is a great unit. I used one for years in Hawaii making gallons of mac nut oil, Kukui nut and coconut oil for soap making. They are now available in the US on ebay and amazon for a bit less that getting them out of Holland.
Mar 27, 2012. 5:08 PMUncopyrighted says:
(removed by author or community request)
Jul 15, 2011. 10:49 PMmad scientist dragon says:
I have a meat grinder, could one modify this to press oil? It has the same auger style mechanism.
thanks
Aug 22, 2010. 8:55 PMFyreAntz says:
Excellent Ible! So many cool things to try and so little time! Thanks for the info!
Jun 4, 2010. 10:25 AMTannius says:
I'm curious about how many sunflower seeds you managed to get from your plot of flowers. How much would you have to plant to get about a gallon of oil do you think? This is was something I never thought about doing with my own garden so I'm glad I ran across this instructible.
Jun 1, 2010. 11:50 AMJayefuu says:
That advert you added on the front of your video is really annoying.
Jun 2, 2010. 2:18 PMJayefuu says:
Sorry, I assumed it was one of the new google adsense options that authors of videos can add to their videos to make a few cents per view.

Just out of interest, why do you use a service like blip.tv if it includes adverts at the beginning? To make money? YouTube and others do have adverts, but only small bits of text across the bottom that viewers can click the cross on. I can only assume it's because... "Advertising is one of the core services that blip offers show creators.  Advertising on blip is "opt-in" for show creators.  This means that you must choose to enable advertising on your show." - from blip.tv website.
Jun 1, 2010. 11:32 PMspamfast says:
 Agreed.  It's really just all advertisement, corrupted ever so slightly with useful information.
Jun 2, 2010. 2:40 PMspamfast says:
Well, you've never pointed that out to me, and I wonder why you're so compelled to try again.  What's your point?  It's now obvious you were aware of the problem, and you'll not make any effort to address the issue.  I don't think that was obvious before the above comments, so I'm not sure why pointing it out evoked such a response.  I get the idea most authors would want to know so they could improve their work.

I signed up on May 2 to respond to the above comment made on June 1, which was in response to your Instructable, posted on May 31.  I knew this was going to happen....

It seems we only have to "be nice" to contributing veterans, FNG's are fair game.

Thanks for the warm welcome MadMan.inc, feels great to be a part of the community.

Oh, and your blip.tv is not "like all video hosting services".  I reloaded the page to be sure it wasn't just that first time.  It wasn't, and not one of the other videos that I have watched on this site have been so polluted.  It's your work, if that's the way you want it presented then so be it, but don't claim it's because there aren't better choices.

Jun 2, 2010. 2:54 PMJayefuu says:
Welcome to the community spamfast. ^.^

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Author:MadMan.inc(Canfield Farms)
I am currently taking over my grandparents farm, and working towards getting off the grid, and a sustainable life.