July 27th, 2007 - Growing Sunflowers
As three of my sunflowers have bloomed and a few more and preparing to do so, I’m getting excited about harvesting them. That won’t be for a few more months (end of September at least). In the meantime, I found a good article about growing them including roasting info (OSU).
I can’t wait! I hope the birds don’t eat them all.
My plans for the sunflowers didn’t work out. I fell in love with the book Sunflower Houses in the spring. The house is made with four rows of sunflowers shaped in a box. I just made two parallel rows since that’s what I had room for. She used morning glories vining up and across for the roof; my research indicated these are invasive so I chose a long vining nasturium instead. Extra bonus: edible! (Except I forgot to eat them except one of the first blooms that I took with the 4th of July salad.)
Well, the sunflowers didn’t get nearly as tall as expected–8 feet+ I think. The tallest are a bit over 6 foot. And that’s only half of them. “Them” meaning the ones that grew, which was only about half. :( And the nasturiums have been really short. Just recently, I noticed that some were longer and maybe I can get them to vine up still. The area is getting overgrown so I’m not sure if I can train them up or not. The sunflowers really shade that area–I didn’t need vines to bring across for a roof!
I also planted these out front to provide shade for the porch. None of the sunflowers grew and the nasturiums were stunted. They’ve now been covered by the pumpkin and guord vines so I suspect they’ve died. But the pumpkin vine is starting to shade the window instead!
This weekend, assuming it dries up a bit (rain, the last couple days), I will work on cutting back some of the vines. I really shouldn’t plant pumpkins again. Or, I’ll only do it if I buy the bush pumpkin. I swear.
October 7th, 2007 at 7:46 pm EDT
It’s not the birds you should be worried about, it’s the mice.