In my county there was a farm with a field of sunflowers planted next to a busy road that attracted so much attention that it had to be moved the following year to a more hidden field. I only heard about the sunflower field after the fact, and I had huge FOMO feelings at not having seen it. To solve that problem, I decided to grow my own sunflower patch in one of my raised garden beds so that I could have my own mini version. The sunflowers were beautiful, but growing the giant flowers in a 3’ by 3’ bed looked a little stalky and ridiculous. Not to mention that sunflowers make a lot of plant material to pull up and compost when the flowers are spent. To get the beauty of sunflowers in a smaller package, I settled on the perfect compromise with the Burpee Sunray Yellow Hybrid Sunflower, a dwarf variety that gives a big sunflower look on a much smaller plant. Burpee’s website says that the plants can “bear up to fourteen, 4” flowers each.” I haven’t had that much success, probably because my container is a little too small for the three plants that I grew, but I have been extremely happy with my results.
To grow the Sunray Hybrids in containers, I start the plants from seed in potting mix and cover my pot with a chicken wire cloche to protect the seeds from birds. My neighbors keep their bird feeder full, and I always wonder why the birds want to steal a couple of seeds from me when they have the all you can eat buffet right next door, but if I don’t use a cover the birds find and eat every single seed. When full grown, the dwarf sunflowers aren’t quite small enough to fit under my cloche, so I do have to uncover them as they start to bloom. If I’m lucky, I can enjoy the show before the rabbits do. As I battle the forces of evil in the garden, aka the fluffy bunnies and birds, I am reminded that nature is indeed “red in tooth and claw.”
I’ll leave you with a picture that I took of the sunflowers right as they were starting to bloom and a couple of days before they became rabbit food. I think that they look so pretty in the blue container. Hopefully next year, I can come up with a better way to protect them.
DaisyGardenCrochet 