I would be interested to know why you want to grow them. Is there something special about home grown sesame seeds? Now, if you were using the leaves, that would be different. I keep hearing about "sesame leaves" being used in Korean dishes, but my understanding is that those greens are not really from the sesame plant. Kind of confusing. Are sesame leaves any good to eat?

Korean "sesame leaves" are a particular type of perilla (aka shiso).

I have some - allegedly - but since they came from Evergreen and I've had such awful germination from everything else I got from them so far, I'm not sure anything is going to actually come up, nor that they are the right plant to start with.

Well, gee, if you want a challenge, why not grow cauliflower or artichokes?

But that does sound interesting. I guess you end up with seed pods? I understand the plants are highly frost tolerant (which is good, considering the long time to harvest), and drought and heat tolerant as well. In fact, they're highly resistant to everything. May not be that much of a challenge to grow them. Sounds like they could grow themselves.

I hear there is precisely one source for seeds in the U.S. -- Sesaco, in Oklahoma.

An interesting read on the website of the American Sesame Growers Association...

Here is a link that might be useful: Sesame Growers

Southern Exposure sells sesame seeds.

Rodney

Here is a link that might be useful: Sesame Seeds

I grew some here in MAz7 this past season. Plants are still standing in the garden, with green pods. Warm dry weather was not long enough to get the pods dry enough to make threshing the seeds easy - as it is it's very difficult, the pod is hard and the seeds are damp inside and don't like to come out.

Not the right climate here.

I grew Afghan sesame last year. They did OK, but I didn't harvest any. I just wanted to see them grow.

I am always looking for organic sesame seeds in the supermarket and they're not easy to find. I would have liked to try that, but sounds like a no go here in zone 6, PNBrown. Thanks for that info.

I used the type called "benne", a landrace from coastal SC.

It is very likely the same that Jefferson kept trying to develop as a viable edible oil source at Monticello. Apparently it grew well enough in the climate there but harvesting and pressing were problematic, probably for financial reasons. What is less well known is that benne oil was produced for many years in ante-bellum SC and GA, part and parcel of the rice culture, both of which were brought with the slave-trade. It was the Africans themselves of course who brought the cultural knowledge for both those crops.

Forgot to mention:

Although the established plants are fairly drought-tolerant, the seed needs moist soil. So if your soil is sandy - which is good for the mature plant - you have to keep the seed-bed moist. This can be a challenge at any kind of scale, or if attempting dry-land culture, because by planting time for sesame the weather is hot and if rain is not frequent germination will be very poor.