I’m not much of a gardener and the little I do lacks any kind of the planning and science my Dad applies to gardening, I’m more of a ‘stick it in the ground and see what happens’ kind of guy. I’ve had a lot of success with that method too, from caster plants to canna’s, it seems that anything I stick in a pot seems to grow.
The truth is I find gardening a little tedious because I like to see results quickly. With that in mind I planted a few sunflower seeds earlier this year and was quickly rewarded with fast growing plants. Not being much of a gardener I had no idea when these sunflowers would actually flower though. But in the last few weeks they’ve produced bright yellow flowers that tower over my garden.
It’s the second time I’ve tried to grow a number of sunflowers. Some years ago I planted about 170 and had about 100 grow. They got to about 3-4 feet tall as I jetted off to the States for summer. On my return I expected to see my garden alive with the bright yellow flowers or at least very close to that state. However when I arrived home the sunflowers were gone and all evidence of the existence was gone. After a little investigating I learned that my gardener had pulled them all up thinking they were “weeds.” I was not impressed.
I’m not sure what the record height for sunflowers is, and while I am pretty sure mine are no where near record breaking height I am still impressed as to just how tall they’ve become. The tallest one tops out at 11ft (3.35m)!
My local paper ran a competition recently for readers to send in pictures of themselves by their sunflowers. If the average age of those who entered the competition wasn’t about six I might have been tempted to enter. For now I’m just content to post a few pictures here and hear how you’ve all grown sunflowers when you were kids but now you’ve grown up you don’t do that anymore! Maybe next year I’ll borrow a child so I can enter the local sunflower competition, although do you think that would that be considered cheating?
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Local kid grow massive sunflowers
My blog tree
Wrote the following comment on Sep 12, 2007 at 12:53 pm
I grew some about 10 years ago that got as tall as the side of my house (they were touching the roof). The tops got so heavy they fell over and died. I never got any seeds! I think the key to growing them that big is that you need something tall enough for them to lean on…or they just topple over and die. Maybe the side of the fence or something.
I grew tomatoes this year in big pots. They became barren around mid-summer due to the heat here. So now I have semi-dead plants w/no tomatoes. The few tomatoes that grew were great! We have such hot summers….its hard to grow anything. Everything just burns up.
Wrote the following comment on Sep 12, 2007 at 1:05 pm
Yay Simon!!!! They look great – and, as always, your pictures are superb. A number of years ago I planted “Mexican” Sunflowers. They were a deep coral color as opposed to being yellow. Gorgeous. The last time I tried, I had these disgusting bugs all over them so I haven’t tried since then.
Wrote the following comment on Sep 12, 2007 at 1:28 pm
Mine are actually teathered to that fence with string. I started them off in big pots because when I planted them straight in the ground the year before they all got eaten by slugs.
That last picture (the one with the bee) was taken on my Sony Ericson cell phone!
Wrote the following comment on Sep 12, 2007 at 3:12 pm
Taken with your cell phone? My Canon is not taking pictures that clear these days. *Pout.* When next you come to Portland, a camera shopping expedition might be in order. Have you been to the big camera store downtown, Cameraworld, I think it is?
Wrote the following comment on Sep 12, 2007 at 4:34 pm
Yeah, been to Cameraworld. In fact that is where I was going to buy my Canon S90 from but they were out of stock so I went across the road to Shutterbug and they price matched them, so it was all good. :-)
The camera’s they have on cell phones these days are pretty damn good. Mine is a 3.2 megapixel camera complete with a flash, and red eye reduction. You can even shoot video on it too!
Wrote the following comment on Sep 13, 2007 at 1:02 pm
i’ve never grown sunflowers. had no idea they were so huge! lovely.
Wrote the following comment on Sep 13, 2007 at 4:01 pm
beautiful!
Wrote the following comment on Sep 13, 2007 at 8:06 pm
Sunflowers are one of my favourite plants. They always raise a smile on even the most grumpiest of faces!
The happy flower :-) Well Done Mr ‘green fingered’ Jones.
Wrote the following comment on Sep 13, 2007 at 10:54 pm
spectacular!
Wrote the following comment on Sep 15, 2007 at 4:09 am
I absolutely adore these pictures. I especially love the way you caught the sun on the first picture. Thanks for sharing.
Wrote the following comment on Sep 20, 2007 at 12:45 am
Skyscrapers, Sunflowers….. what next? Moonwalkers? ;o)
Wrote the following comment on Sep 20, 2007 at 6:06 am
I have definite sunflower envy.
Wrote the following comment on Sep 21, 2007 at 3:11 pm
These are absolutely gorgeous pictures Simon!