We’ve grown two kinds of sunflowers in our garden. One kind makes one enormous head for seeds. The other kind—this kind—is for cut flowers.
We discovered the first year we grew them that it’s critical to cut off the initial flower at the top of the main stem. Otherwise it just makes that flower as large as it can—not unlike the other kind of sunflower. But if you take that flower, the plants start making numerous medium-sized flowers on side stems. If you have four or six sunflower plants, you can expect to be able to harvest a few flowers every day for most of the summer.
After Jackie broke her wrist last summer, we had to abandon our garden, and our sunflowers didn’t get harvested. Instead, they bloomed, made seeds, and dropped them in the garden. The result is that this year we have lots of volunteer sunflower plants. Lots. I haven’t counted, but it’s more than four or six.
I don’t seem to have any sunflowers in the study yet, but I think every other room in the house has a vase of flowers, and I’m sure the study isn’t far behind.
Tomorrow we’ll have more flowers. And more the day after that.
I like sunflowers.
Those are lovely!
Thanks!
There are three color versions among this kind of sunflower—one that’s all yellow, and two others where the central parts of the petals are either yellowish-orange or reddish-orange. Last year (when we also had volunteers) we didn’t have any of the reddish blossoms, so I didn’t expect any this year. But we’ve got some anyway. Either sunflower genetics are more complex than I imagined, or we had some seeds in the ground from a previous year.