Sunflowers

[Ms-T]

Anybody else got a sulking sunflower , all it wants to do is look at the wall.

[bario1]

Come on, face the crowd!

[Mr Bones]

It looks like it's playing hide and seek Ours are flowering before getting very tall. Been a strange year weatherwise I guess.

[burnie]

I've no flowers yet, they usually follow the sun don't they?

[Bren In Pots]

Its trying to peep over the wall

[Chestnut]

I sowed giant sunflowers this year, packet said they could grow to 14 feet high - and they are flowering at 5foot. On the plus side, it looks like they might be about to develop multiple flower heads which are forming at the junction of main stem and the leaf stalks. At first I wondered if it was a labelling mix up in the seed packing factory, but I think Mr B has hit the nail on the head! ( either that, or we got our seeds from the same place)

[Shortie]

Haha, I love it that the sunflower is sulking

I also have sown Giant sunflowers, mine are just above 5'2" - I say that because being that height, I had to gently bend them yesterday to check if there was any sign of flowers coming

.... which also tells you everything about whether I have flowers yet, haha

[ESBkevin]

Our sunflowers are starting to form heads so I don't expect significant heights.

I watched a you tube video at the weekend and an 'expert' suggested you prune out the side shoots (much like a tomato plant), so that you got one massive flower head.
We're going to try that, but I fear everything is late and stunted. Lets see what mother nature does in the coming weeks.

[Ms-T]

Happy Sunflowers

[Peteyd]

I'm somewhat late to the party here but thought i'd weigh in anyway.

We grew Russian Giants last year as part of a family competition (and as part of a local competition this year but didn't enter!) The maximum these grew was 3m with varying sized heads.

This year the family competition was american giants, these seemed to fair much better, with most getting over 3m (i think the tallest was just under 4m).

each time, ours seem to have really thick stems and huge heads just seems to be slightly lacking in the height department. I'm not sure if its to do with the feed we're using or whether we're just not cut out to grow record breakingly tall sunflowers...

[Plot70]

I have got one that self seeded under the bird feeding tree.
It has got a six inch flower at four feet.

[Nicos]

All my sunflowers failed at the germination stage...but a few weeks ago I noticed a couple of self seeded ones growing amongst the strawberries
No idea what type they are but I guess either the 8 ft or 4 foot multiheaded ones unless they are from the birdfeeder.

At the moment they are about 2- 2ft 6ins high and forming their first single flower buds.
Fingers crossed they get to flower !

[burnie]

That storm snapped all but one of my sunflowers, all were happily flowering, I bought some Russian Giant seeds for next year for the grandsons to grow.

[Bren In Pots]

Burnie that last storm bashed my sunflowers that much it took all the petals away

[Peteyd]

As it was competition time, i staked all the sunflowers with a length of batten driven into the ground about 2ft. this meant i was able to support the heads just prior to the storm and fortunately didn't suffer too much damage (apart from one or two which suffered the same fate as bren's!)