Good Day Sunflowers !

If you want sunflowers, you gotta plant seeds.......
here's a few.....
Mammoth Russian, the BIG ones that get to 8' to 12'. Burpee's Evening Sun mix grows to 6' - 7'. Burgundy Moulin Rouge pollen free are short and perfect for cut flowers in the house. Italian White are simple and daisy-like. The Fun 'n Sun mix grows to 4' - 6'. The colors can be yellow, gold, cream, orange, pinkish, maroon, stripes and with dark centers or light centers.

All the flowers in this post are from my gardens in the last 2 years, except the next to last pic.

I love this moment......a day or 2 before the petals curl back to make that great big sunflower.....

The story of sunflowers (Helianthus annuus ) dates back to the American continents as a wild plant that grew freely.
American Indian tribes in North America  cultivated sunflowers in Arizona and New Mexico about 3000 BC.   The wild sunflower  plant was taken to Europe by Spanish explorers some time around 1500. Peter the Great of Russia adored the sunflower as an ornamental.  By the late 19th century, Russian sunflower seed came back to  the US. By 1880, seed companies were advertising the 'Mammoth Russian' sunflower seed in cataloges.

Sunflowers are used for decoration, as a farm crop for oil, or crushed for sunflower flour and butter, or eaten as um......sunflower seeds! The petals and seeds can be used to make a dye, too.

Sunflower seeds come in different sizes too! the big ones here are the Mammoth Russian, the teeny ones are the multi-color sunflowers that grow about 5' tall, and the medium size are from a Sunspot variety that grow knee-high.


Sunflowers are part of the composite family of flowers......like the dandelion.....

and the Shasta daisy....it started out the size of a quarter or so, and made big as your hand by Luther Burbank....

the composite flowers of dusty miller and a friendly bumble bee.......tho dusty miller is grown for its gray dusty velvet leaves.....I let it go to bloom.......

pink cosmos.......

Just as they start to open...... like the sun.......

and at the end of the season......

random pic from the interwebz.....if you own it let me know for proper credit...

a path of sunflowers above the rose garden..........

Here is the full selection of seeds I planted the last week of April 2013 in the front yard borders........ Beans, squash, gourds, cosmos...marigolds.....sunflowers, sunflowers, sunflowers...........
Indian corn, heirloom corn, alyssum for the bees...