What Sunflowers We Are Growing This Year?
Last year was the first year that we grew flowers on our allotment plot. It was a hard choice to decide which flowers to try and grow in my allotment. Not having any knowledge on growing flowers from seed it was all new to me. Yes, I maybe Gardening With Ben but I don’t have the knowledge on flower growing!. Hopefully over the next few years as I do more and more research on flower growing I will be able to find out more and give tips and advice on this.
Well, last year I tried growing Sunflowers. I had grown these as a child before and had great fun growing them in the past so I thought I would give it another go on my plot. I chose to grow Giant Sunflowers, these seeds are extremely cheap to purchase costing anything between £1-£2 usually getting around 80 seeds per pack.
I started these off around April in my unheated greenhouse and lots of them germinated. Once these were big enough to move outside these were planted into the ground outside. I lost a few of these to the slugs as they seem to be very tasty to them. So this year I will try and protect them better from the slugs and snails. I will be looking for some slug traps that can easily catch them. The last year was the first year I stayed totally away from slug pellets. I will hopefully be doing some more information on the best ways to stop the slugs so watch this space.
The sunflowers that did actually take and grow well did absolutely amazing. I think I had around 10 that actually grew. I had a few at the front of my plot as a kind of welcoming flower then I had a few down each side of my plot. There was one in particular that did extremely well the head on the sunflower was massive which you will be able to see from the picture below.
I did save the sunflower heads from the plants that grew but unfortunately, the rats found them and destroyed them. Next time I think I will need to hang them up instead.
Sunflowers are great to grow with the children and as adults, you can see how tall you can actually grow them.
Allotment and Kitchen Garden Book
Are you starting an allotment or planning on growing your own fruit, vegetables, herbs, and flowers in a kitchen garden? If so we highly recommend the book Allotment Month By Month. This does exactly what it does on the cover to help you with what you should be doing in the allotment and kitchen garden each month. Below you can see the link for Amazon where you can purchase the book directly. This book is extremely popular with all allotment holders as you will read in the reviews:-
You can check out all the allotment and kitchen garden books we recommend here.
What Sunflowers I’m growing this year
So that brings us on to what sunflowers I’m growing this year. With them growing so well last year I have been looking more into sunflowers. There are many different colour sunflowers, heights and varieties to try growing so here are the varieties I’m growing, I have also provided the links to where I’ve purchased them from so you can try and grow them along with me.
Giant Sunflower
This year I will be growing the giant sunflower again! With the amazing success of growing it last year and knowing it grows well in my soil, it will be perfect. These can grow up to 3 meters tall and include 100 seeds.
You can find these by clicking on the link below:-
80 Red Sunflower Seeds Plus 100 Giant Yellow Seeds Flower Seeds by Pretty Wild Seeds
This pack of sunflowers includes 80 red sunflowers and 100 giant sunflowers. I’ve never seen red sunflowers before so fingers crossed these will be great to see on the plot. Yes I know these have more giant sunflowers in them but I can always save them for if the others do not grow.
You can find these by clicking the link below:-
Sunflower – Autumn Beauty – 160 Finest Seeds
These Autumn Beauty Sunflowers look absolutely amazing. I’ve never seen any that look as beautiful. The shades and colours in these are amazing. I just hope they are actually like what they are on the packet.
You can find these by clicking the link below:-
Sunflower Seeds for Planting-Autumn Beauty- Outdoor Mixture Bulk 20+
Well this pack looks amazing over 20 different variety of sunflowers to grow. I did not even know that there was that many. I will look forward to receiving this package. I don’t know if they are all individually packaged. Fingers crossed that they are. Most probably the separate packets will be in thse but I don’t think there will be many of each variety so we will have to wait and see.
You can get these seeds from the link below:-
Sunflower Black Magic F1, Dark Red
Last but not least of these dark red sunflowers. These will look greatly mixed in with the giant sunflowers. The mixture of yellow and reds will go great together. Apparently, these grow to around 120cm so a lot shorter than the giant ones.
These can be purchased from the link below
So you can see I’ve ordered absolutely loads of seeds for the allotment. You will probably be thinking where will Ben grow them all? Well, I’m thinking the same question haha. I will probably plant a few of each and save some for next year. These will be planted all the way down each side of my plot so fingers crossed they will look stunning. You will have to follow me on Facebook and Instagram to stay tuned on how they grow.