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
Sunflower Seeds
Place to grow sunflowers
Seed oil Extractor
(plastic bottle tubing small funnel wire screen strainer)
Glass Jars
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Signing UpStep 1: 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.
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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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?
i am slowly grinding out the rest of the 40 pound bag, i would like to motorize it first.
But i think i can get at least 2 gallons. And for my household that is a years worth of cooking oil.
Sunflower oil is a healthy choice for your cooking oil needs. High in vitamin E, it has a light clean taste. There are three types available.
Plus im using it to make soap and lip balm.
I found one place that sells it Hienens and it was $8.50 for 16 oz
1 US gallon = 128 US fluid ounces
16 oz per bottle = 8 bottles8 bottles x $8.50 = $68.00
x 2 Gallons per bag = $136.00
$125.00 + $15.00 = $140.00
MACHINE SUNFLOWER SEEDS
Plus this is perpetual so only requires a one time investment
and is you use (2 gallons of cooking oil a year a good average for most households)
So this will pay its self off in one year. Not to mention The perpetual years after of never having to buy cooking oil ever.
If you can make a wormscrew i didn't have the machine to mill it, but that 90% of it. the rest is jsut to hold the worm screw in place.
www.piteba.com
another seed oil extraction machine is made from two car jacks that on either side of a metal pipe. this is a cold press
but sunflowers are pretty much weeds, they dont have to many bugs so the use of pesticides and fertilizer are less then your normal food crop
i know there are companies that sell organic black oil sunflower seeds, but there sold in little seed packs but at least if you grow them you can be 100% organic
do you store your finished oil (already settled and sediment discarded) at room temp or in a fridge?
have you tried pressing flax oil or other oil seeds out of the Piteba? what's your experience with those oilseeds?
thanks for this page, and look forward to comparing notes
sincerely
robert rex
Ive heard from people that live in very hot climate that vegetable oil will go rancid but ive never had that happen and i store all my oil in anywhere else but my cupboard
Nope ive only used sunflower seeds but here is the link to that info
http://www.piteba.com/eng/index_eng.htm
I will be making a insctructable about how to motorize it as soon as i can figure out how.
thanks
i say get your self some black oil sunflower seeds and try
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.
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.