How to Grow Oil Sunflowers? A Detailed Guide to the Latest Planting Methods
The main use of oil sunflower is for pressing oil. It is one of the more important oil crops in our country, and together with peanut, soybean and rapeseed it is known as one of the four major oil crops. Oil sunflower also ranks far ahead in the world, and the oil produced from oil sunflower is very healthy and nutritious. It looks a lot like the common sunflower and is also called the oilseed sunflower, but it is shorter than the common sunflower, with plump seeds and an extremely high oil content. Because its nutritional value and edible value are both considerable, it is a relatively profitable product in the growing industry. So today QinNongNet will take everyone to look at how oil sunflower is grown.
1. Choosing and Preparing the Land
Like the common sunflower, oil sunflower has strong adaptability to the environment, so it does not have excessive requirements for soil. However, when planting oil sunflower you must pay attention to crop rotation and must not plant it repeatedly in the same piece of land, because that way not only will the yield of oil sunflower not be high, but the disease rate will also be extremely high. Preparing the land is a rather important matter. We need to carry out deep ploughing, which can clean up some of the pests, bacteria and weeds remaining in the field, and this can save a great deal of labour for the field management that follows. Finally, after deep ploughing we need to spread a sufficient amount of base fertiliser, mainly farmyard manure, about two thousand jin per mu on average, and secondly we can mix in an appropriate amount of chemical fertiliser. The base fertiliser must be applied in full, because the base fertiliser is the foundation of a high yield of oil sunflower.
2. Sowing at the Right Time
Under normal conditions oil sunflower can be sown in two seasons, generally around April each year and around June to July each year. In short, the average daily temperature should remain between ten and fifteen degrees, and of course the temperature can be even higher. These two periods are very suitable for the development and growth of oil sunflower. As for the sowing method, we can use drilling, hole sowing or dibbling, and the method we use most often is dibbling. On the prepared land we simply scatter the seeds evenly at a certain spacing, then press the seeds into the soil and cover them with earth. Drilling is a little more troublesome, as it requires opening furrows one by one in the field and then sowing and covering the seeds, and hole sowing is even more troublesome.
3. Field Management
The first thing in field management is checking for missing seedlings, filling gaps and thinning. First check whether the field is short of seedlings; if it is, then we need to thin the seedlings, separating out the surplus seedlings to fill the gaps and ensure the seedlings in the field are uniform. After filling gaps, water promptly, as only this can ensure the survival rate of the transplanted seedlings. Secondly, about seven to ten days after planting, we need to carry out one round of cultivating and weeding. This can reduce nutrient loss and at the same time let the soil breathe, which can promote the growth rate of oil sunflower. There is also, of course, the need to cut off the relatively dense branches and leaves of the oil sunflower, and also to cut off those whose flower discs are very small and whose seeds are not plump, trying as much as possible to keep the high-quality products. Finally, oil sunflower needs insect-assisted pollination, wind-assisted pollination or hand pollination in order to set seed, so we can choose the pollination method according to the planted area.
4. Fertiliser and Water Management
The early growth of oil sunflower does not need many nutrients, so as long as we apply the base fertiliser in full, there is basically no need for a second application of fertiliser. But special situations cannot be ruled out, and then we still need to top-dress the oil sunflower once or twice, generally applying urea once at the seedling stage to promote the growth of the oil sunflower seedlings, and then applying a potassium fertiliser once more after flowering. Water management is also relatively easy, because oil sunflower has extremely strong drought resistance, so generally it is only if there has been no rainfall before flowering that we need to water once, and also when the rainfall is relatively heavy the water in the field must be drained away, otherwise disease is very likely.
5. Pest and Disease Control
The main diseases of oil sunflower are sclerotinia and black spot. Sclerotinia harms not only the stems and leaves of the plant but also the flower disc of the oil sunflower, while black spot mainly harms the stems and leaves of the plant. The control method is to spray with carbendazim, and generally two to three applications are enough for recovery. The most common pests are cutworms and weevils, which we can control with phoxim emulsifiable concentrate.