Those that follow this blog know I am operating a hospice for
two of our dying cats. Vinny is in
kidney failure and Sneezy has Mastic cancer.
As a person who tends toward care taking, it is easy to become narrow
focused (engulfed) on the care they need.
This leaves little room or time for anything else. Their care is important to me, but I realize self care is equally important.
Otherwise if I fall ill or worse, who will tend to the needs of my
babies?
With that in mind, I needed to do something more self
nurturing while caring for my dying babies.
What to do, what to do??? I know!
Sunflowers! I love sunflowers!
WARNING: I am going to
inundate you with lots of pictures.
I am enamored or captivated by sunflowers. They are simplistic yet so complex. My interest began as a
child.
Every July my sisters and I spent a week to two weeks with
our grandparents in Yakima, which is east of Seattle over the Cascade Mountains. The drive was roughly three hours. As a child, a three hour drive is an eternity
of time. We were always excited to see
our grandparents and of course excited to be free from our parents and their
rules!
We spent most of our time with our grandma. My grandpa was still working, at the time. We saw him in the mornings and had dinner
(lunch) with him before he left for work.
But mostly it was just us girls, grandma included.
Now my grandma had a green hand, forget the thumb! She could grow anything she wanted too. She
had the most beautiful rose garden!
There were many different colors and varieties of roses, with lush smells. In the evening, there was always a soft
breeze, which floated the scent of all these roses through the air. In the early morning through our bedroom
window, before the sun warmed the earth, you could smell the sweet aroma of the
roses carried on the morning breeze.
There was a garden with veggies, flower gardens and just
beautiful landscape. I did not fully
appreciate it at the time, but I do now!
So much work went into the care of their property. They had 5 acres, but the 2 acres around the
house were the best kept. The fields were pretty much left to themselves. We enjoyed the fields because I learned to
drive an old tractor with a stick shift and no brakes! Good times, good times!
Grandma grew the biggest sunflowers I've ever seen. They were roughly 8 plus feet high. The
flowers were usually 14 inches across.
One year, while we were there, one of the sunflowers was dead; at least
I thought it was. I told grandma about
it and she said, “it was ready.” For what?? It was dead…. Grandma had me cut the flower as high up as I
could reach, I was probably all of 5 feet tall at the time. I did my best and brought in the dead flower…pondering
what in the world this dead flower was ready for?
She gathered us around and showed us that the sunflower had
seeds. The only time you can get these
seeds is when the flower dies. “Neat-o,” says the kid who doubted grandma’s sanity moments earlier. Sure enough, she showed us how to get the
seeds out of the flower. Well, raw seeds
are not that tasty to me, yuck. But grandma
knew how to roast them so they would taste good.
She got out a bowl filled it with water and we washed
the sunflowers then laid them out on a baking sheet and salted them. She popped
them into the oven for what seemed like ages to a kid, then out they came and
we had roasted sunflower seeds to eat. They were good!
Grandma explained that the song birds liked the sunflower
seeds too. They would eat the seeds
right from the flower. How cool is that!? Thus began my
interest in sunflowers. Time and life
took me miles away from growing sunflowers.
I am always stopped in my tracks by the blooms of
sunflowers. They make me smile. To me they are this big smiling face that
just beams at you! You cannot help but smile back. Yes, I know, you are wondering if I have gone
a little too south in the head. No. I
just see these big beautiful flowers smiling and I think of my grandma, her
gardens and the lesson I learned about these incredible flowers.
Since moving to Texas,
I grow more sunflowers without trying.
The song birds do a good job of dropping seeds all around the feeders. Come spring, up pop sunflowers all over the yard, which I mow around. I had a nice small crop of them last year. See the pictures below.
Don't you want to smile back?
There are two brothers that farm roughly 5,000 acres in the
area. A couple of springs back they grew
sunflowers, a short variety! They were
absolutely wonderful to watch. Each
morning they all faced the east to greet the morning sunrise. As the day progressed they slowly turned
following the sun. By sunset all the buds were facing west. This went on each day. One day they began to
bloom, facing the east, those that were not ready to bloom continued to follow
the sun from east to west. When they all bloomed they faced east. Oh what
beauty! All these smiling faces greeting
you as you drove past. People would stop
to take pictures and yes, some cut their flowers! I missed the harvest, as I was in Seattle at the time. I wanted to see how they would combine (cut,
harvest) these for the seeds. No, I did not get a picture. Yes, I am kicking myself for it.
My passion has grown for sunflowers. This year I picked up some variety of seeds
from the store. My husband tilled a
patch just outside my kitchen door close to the bird feeders. Now I did not have as many volunteer
sunflowers this year as last year. The
birds however enjoyed what was there.
Side bar: Interesting thing with those packets of seeds, the
packages were light on the seeds. Once I
opened them I found there were only 4 to maybe 6 seeds per packet! The seed packets I did not open from 2010
were three times the quantity for the same price I paid this year. Amazing,
either the price goes up and the quantity goes down, or the quantity goes down
and the price is the same. We just
accept this…..why?
I planted four varieties.
I planted a variety called Autumn
Beauty. Aren’t these just beautiful?
They vary in color, pink, gold, lemon-yellow, bronze and mahogany. They grow 4
to 6 feet tall, with 5 to 7 inch blooms. The main stock of one of these plants made it
to 6 feet in height!
I so enjoyed the various colors
I planted a variety called Russian Mammoth, but they did not reach mammoth, meaning they did
not reach there 8 to 10 foot growth height with 12 to 14 across flowers, but I
like what I have. I think my grandma
planted Russian mammoth.
I planted another variety called Evening Sun. They grow 6 to
9 feet high with 8 to 10 inch blooms. The
blossoms are multicolored consisting of a red black center surrounded by petals
in bands of colors in shades of mahogany-red, russet-bronze and gold. These
plants have striking dark green foliage.
I like these flowers. They look
so soft and petite.
The last variety is a Lemon
Queen. It grows 5 to 7 feet high,
with blooms up to 12 inches. They have
multiple flowers on the stock. You can
see how prolific this stock is. The flowers
are a creamy lemon color with a chocolate center.
I had some trouble with these seeds, the few I got. Some just plain did not germinate. I rummaged through my seed box and found I
had these exact 3 varieties from a couple of years ago. I had another variety
called Aztec Gold Hybrid, which I
planted. Aztec Gold grows 6 to 7 feet tall, with large flowers up to 11 inches
across. These were 2 years old, but they came up. Some are not tall at
all. But I did get a few good sunflower
plants.
Here are some facts about sunflowers. Sunflowers are in the genus Helianthus, which
contains 80 different species. Sunflowers
that most people are familiar with belong to the genus Helianthus annuus,
meaning annual flower. 38 species of
Helianthus are perennial! I need to do
some research on these.
There are also some that do not have pollen. These are good
for people with allergies, who like to cut sunflowers for display. Now if you plan to grow these and cut them for
display in your home. Here is a tip: Cut
them as they are opening up. They will last longer. See the pictures for an
example of when to cut.
Sunflowers are not hard to grow. They love the sun! They need water as they grow. I even gave them
some fish fertilizer. They are some what
drought tolerant but from the looks of some of my volunteers, they do not
produce as many seeds without some watering; see the picture below. I suggest you water them. Now I did plant
them a tad bit close to each other.
Follow the instructions in spacing.
Basically you water and let them grow.
The seeds are around the outer edge from this volunteer.
Watering: make sure you do not water the leaves. I did. Not good. The sunflower leaves get
rust from getting wet.
Once the sunflowers began blooming, the bees were on it. In
fact, a couple of humming birds got into the flowers as well. I so enjoyed watching the bees and humming
birds going from flower to flower. They
so enjoy their work!
Here is a bug I found on my sunflowers. Do not know what it is, but it looks weird,
tough and kind of prehistoric. See the
pictures below.
At the base of my sunflowers, up came some volunteer pumpkin
plants! I had some pumpkins last October
and broke them open for the animals to enjoy. Some of the seeds managed to
germinate amongst my sunflowers. I had
one pumpkin. I was excited. BUT one of my nightly critters decided to taste
it……..not once, not twice, but three little nibbles off the green pumpkin……Now
the ants are eating the pumpkin. Here is a picture of my first, and only, pumpkin. I am hopeful that the plants will produce
more pumpkins, but so far, just a lot of blooming flowers.
Here are a few pictures of my pumpkin patch.
The pumpkin flowers are open from dawn till about 9:00A, then they close up until the evening. Here are a few pictures of the pumpkin flowers.
Here are a few pictures of my pumpkin patch.
At this writing, my sunflowers are drooping and dying. They are, as my grandma would say, getting
ready. The winter birds that are
beginning to arrive, will love eating the seeds! I enjoyed growing them, watching them, taking
pictures and just seeing their smiling faces each day! My hope is to expand my sunflower plot next
year. I am interested in trying to grow
more varieties. I will be ordering seeds
online this time.
The seeds are almost ready!
If you have some space, give them a try! If you only have space for pots there are
varieties geared for planters. I thought
I would share some other varieties with you.
Pollen- less varieties, just to name a few are: Cherry
Rose, Moulin Rouge, Red Sun and Sunrich Orange.
this is a picture of Cherry Rose
Small planter/pot varieties: Sunny Bunch grows 3 feet high with 2 to 3 inch blooms; Solar Chocolate Gold grows 18-24 inches high, Sunny-Yellow Pacino and the Teddy Bear.
What I learned: If you plan to plant more than one variety or even one variety, you want to space out your planting. Plant one row then wait 2 weeks then plant another row and so on. Sunflowers take 7 to 14 days to germinate. Once one row begins coming up, plant the next row. This will give you a longer blooming season.
Sunflowers need water while they grow. Fertilizer won't hurt them either.
Never water the leaves of the plant, you will get rust which is ugly looking and can kill the plant.
On sunflowers that have multiple blooms on one stock, cut the flowers, this will encourage the plant to keeping flowers. I did not know this until after the fact.
Don't let pumpkins grow beneath your sunflowers. Pumpkins are clingy and will wrap themselves around your sunflowers and bring them down. I learned this by experience.
If you were not bored with the above pictures, here are some more of my little patch of sunflowers.
Aztec Gold on left. The Autumn Beauty on the right has rust on the leaves. Not good.
Evening Sun on left and Autumn Beauty on the right.
