Grow Sunflowers

I believe in beauty.

As their name implies, sunflowers love full sunshine and warm temperatures!  Did you know that the sunflower is a North American native and was a key food crop for Native Americans?

Today, sunflowers are still grown for food!  Not only do the birds love them, their seeds make a wholesome snack and are also pressed into sunflower cooking oil.

For a head start, the late spring is a good time to sow sunflower seeds indoors. You can also sow them into the garden once all danger of frost is passed.

These Sun-loving flowers are named Helianthus annus: (helios means sun in Greek and annus designates it as an annual.  Over the past few years, sunflowers have come into their own as cutting flowers and give beauty to any vase or floral arrangement.   There are lots of new cultivars in many shapes – from standard ray flowers to pompoms or fuzzy disks.

Size of Sunflowers

Sizes range from dwarf to giant and the colors go well beyond the standard sunny yellow into white, lemon, bicolors, and even soft burgundy.

Unique cultivars to grow

If you’re interested in growing sunflowers, there are lots of new cultivars to try, many of them pollenless, so go ahead and bring them into the house!  

Here are some of my favorites:

Ring of Fire: An AAS (All-America-Selections) winner with striking 5-inch wide pollenless flowers; bi-coloured petals in dark red around a chocolate brown center taper off to golden yellow tips. Grows 4 to 5 feet tall; late-blooming.

Claret: An excellent cutting sunflower that keeps its intense velvet burgundy color in the summer sun. Main stem grows 6 feet tall; produces side-shoots with lots of blooms.

Eversun: A deep yellow, early-blooming pollenless type with big 10- to 12-inch ray flowers around a dark brown disk; flowers produced on one main stem.

Teddy Bear: I’m generally not a fan of overbred flowers, but I’ve fallen in love with the sheer fluffiness of this one.  This sunflower bloom has soft, fluffy, pompom heads that make handsome cut flowers; 2 to 3 feet tall with lots of flowers per plant. A perfect plant for a children’s garden (and anyone who is young at heart), as well as containers. You will find the seeds here: Organic Teddy Bear Sunflower.

Giant Sungold: At 5 feet in height with lots of flower-bearing branches, this is a taller version of ‘Teddy Bear’.

Organic Mammoth: If you’re looking for a classic big, tall sunflower, Organic Mammoth Sunflower can reach 12′ in height. Thick stalks on this single-stem variety supports huge heads.