Video: Harvesting Strawflowers for Use as Dried Flowers | from Johnny's Selected Seeds

I'm here in our strawflower trial, and I'm going to give a demonstration for harvest stage for strawflower for dried flowers. Strawflowers are great for fresh and for dried use, but if you're harvesting them for dried use, there are a couple of things to consider.

Strawflower will continue to open after they've been harvested and hung to dry. So what will happen is, if they're harvested too mature, this center disk, while it's beautiful and golden right now, will turn to a pale muddy brown color after it's been dried, and it's just not as attractive or desirable.

Ideally, what you'd end up with, with a dried flower, is where this center disk is still covered. So you can still have the beautiful color of these bracts without the dull brown center.

But, what makes it tricky is that strawflowers will open and close every day. So judging what stage the bloom is at for harvesting can be a little bit tricky. If you're harvesting in the evening or on a cloudy or rainy day, all of the blooms may look like they're closed. We recommend harvesting on a bright sunny day, so you can see the stage that all of the blooms are at.

Just as a few examples, anything like this, where the center disk is starting to open up, and starting to be revealed, that's going to continue opening. That disk is going to be fully exposed once it's hung to dry. And that will continue to fade as the blooms age in your drying room. So these are all probably past what is the ideal harvest stage for drying.

I would be looking for something more like where just the outer first few outer layers of bracts are starting to open up. Even something like this, where there are just a few layers, because they will continue to open after you've harvested it and hung it to dry.

I hope that's helpful, and hope I have provided a good summary here.