Garden Centre

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Still rain, therefore sunflowers

Whatever the weather throws at us in the autumn – Indian summer or arctic winter – certain plants cope well. Nasturtiums are always good, dahlias cope with anything except a frost, and Japanese anemones are good, even when whipped around by strong winds.

And of course, there are always sunflowers, brilliant, easy to grow annuals whose seeds can be sown straight into well-drained soil in the spring, giving them full sun and a lot of water. Sunflowers are fast-growing, undemanding insect attractors and also feed winter birds – something like a cross between a giant daisy, a food bank and a record breaker! The tallest sunflower ever recorded grew to over 25 feet and the largest sunflower head recorded so far was 32½ inches.

There are downsides, although these are few: ensuring you use crop rotation means you’ll avoid diseases like Sclerotina which is a white mould) which makes the sunflower head rot.

Sunflowers are ready to harvest when the back portion of the head turns brown. Original sunflowers are yellow-petalled with dark brown centres. New cultivars have dark yellow, tan, orange, maroon or striped petals, and dark green-yellow centres. Low-pollen sunflower varieties have been introduced to enable hay fever sufferers to enjoy them too.

You can collect seeds in autumn for planting next year and either leave the heads on the flowers through the winter or cut off a whole head and hang it upside down from your bird table.

Labels: autumn colour, autumn storms, sunflowers

The All Seasons Gardener at 4:27 AM

---