It’s crazy to think that we’re coming to the end of our Flower Fridays! Temperatures are definitely dropping, reminding us that we’re not all that far from the end of the season.
We’ve been growing sunflowers for ages, they are practically synonymous with most gardeners. Obviously sunflower seeds can be a crop, but we’ve never really grown them for that purpose since it takes a LOT of plants to make a meaningful harvest. Since many grow them just for looks, many varieties out there don’t actually produce seeds.
But, we wanted to know if it could be done. With typical maturity times coming in around 105 to 130 days, it’s decidedly borderline for us! So, this year, we focused our efforts on growing a mix of different seed producing types. We’re happy to report that at least some varieties can produce in our short growing season!
When we do things like this, our first step is to determine feasibility. Often, we grow a mix just to see how different varieties perform. Like in this case, we’ve learned that variety does matter. In subsequent seasons, we’ll then hone in on specific varieties that successfully produce. Ideally, we’d like to find varieties with shorter maturity times, just to give us wiggle room for seasonal issues.
Compared to many of the flowers we discuss in our FF posts, sunflowers are a relatively recent discovery. Since they are primarily native to the Western US and Mexico, it was mostly early natives in the Americas growing them. Today, they obviously see much wider international distribution, of course.
Our sunflowers are a bit “less to look at” this year than they usually are. But, this reflects our purpose as what we’re measuring is productivity and not beauty.
We’re looking forward to a few small snacks after we harvest these! We’ll be sure to keep you up to date on future efforts, as next season we may get a bit more serious and try to hyper fuel some in our sub irrigated containers!
