Plant to a depth of a half inch. Cover the seed with soil and water it in. Use grow lights and keep them inches above the tops of the plants. Run them for hours per day. Step 4: Care for the seedlings Keep the seedlings watered and fertilize once a week with a liquid organic fertilizer. Step 5: Move the plants outside Another downside of using this method of when to plant sunflowers is the need to slowly acclimate the seedlings before transplanting them outdoors full time.
About a week before your last frost is expected, take the seedlings outside for a few hours every day. For me, this is the easiest and most practical way to grow sunflowers. The seeds are sown directly out into the garden. You get to skip the grow lights, acclimatization, transplanting, and general babying your sunflower plants.
This is the tough-love version of growing sunflowers. The biggest downside to sowing sunflowers outdoors is the pests. Birds, chipmunks, and mice enjoy eating the seeds, and slugs, bunnies, and deer sometimes nibble on the plants themselves more on managing these pests later.
I always over-plant, knowing that I may lose some of the plants to these critters. Step 1: Decide on the proper timing When to plant sunflowers outdoors depends on your last average frost date, just like it does when starting the seeds indoors. Except you can delay the process by a month or more.
I start planting sunflower seeds within days of my last frost date, and I continue to sow more seeds for several weeks beyond that date. This gives me a staggered bloom time and keeps my garden colorful for the longest amount of time. Remove any weeds and cultivate or turn the soil over a bit to loosen it.
Average garden soil is just fine for these tough plants. Step 3: Plant the seeds Sow the sunflower seeds directly into the garden soil. Use a trowel to dig individual holes about 1-inch-deep, or dig a trench or furrow to plant a row of seeds. Plant the seeds about 6 to 8 inches apart for dense plantings or 12 to 15 inches apart for wider spacing this is ideal for branching sunflower varieties that produce multiple flowering branches, rather than those that produce a single flower on a tall, upright stalk.
Try to dig them out carefully because if there is a decent root system intact, you can move the thinned seedlings to a new spot in the garden. As long as you have that many days or more between now and the end of your growing season first frost date , you should be good to go to plant late-season sunflowers.
The best way to get the most out of any garden is to plan, plan, plan. This means gathering seeds, drawing out a garden map, and planning what will go where and when. Buy a dedicated calendar for gardening and markdown when your sunflowers need to be directly sown into the ground. This means you plant a certain amount of flowers one week, then another the next, and so on.
You might have some success in starting sunflowers indoors, but to get the most out of them and to achieve healthy and big blooms, direct sow. Sunflowers are hungry, hungry hippos. Since they grow so tall, so fast, and have to support large blooms, they need a lot of food to be sturdy and healthy. Use either a slow release fertilizer early in the season or fertilize the plants with organic compost or liquid fertilizer every two weeks during their big growing season. Some varieties have edible seeds.
Most need staking to prevent them from falling over in the wind or rain. Photo by: Proven Winners. Height: 1 to 4 feet tall Bloom size: 2 to 10 inches across. Dwarf sunflowers are good for containers or small gardens. Many dwarf types are branching and offer multiple blooms per plant. Some are double-flowered, some are bicolored, and some are pollenless. Dwarf sunflowers are the perfect size for cutting and using in arrangements. Helianthus annuus 'Teddy Bear'.
Height: 2 to 6 feet tall Bloom size: 4 to 8 inches across. Known for their fuzzy, fluffy, or soft texture, double sunflowers are attention grabbers. Available in semi-double or fully-double forms, their flowers last longer than single-bloom varieties and make excellent cut flowers. Many are pollenless or have minimal pollen. Zones: Height: 1 to 10 feet tall Bloom size: 2 to 5 inches across. Perennial sunflowers will come back year-after-year.
They are tough plants that offer weeks of flowers. Rather than sending up a giant flower head, like many of the annual types, these sunflowers form clumps with many smaller flowers. Photo courtesy: All-America Selections. Many gardeners are surprised to discover that sunflowers are available in more colors than the classic bright yellow. There are types with deep red flowers, others that show of beautiful combinations of color and still others that are white. False sunflowers resemble smaller versions of true sunflowers, but have raised, cone-shaped centers.
The petals stay with the flower instead of withering and falling off, as sunflowers do. Blooms can appear in orange, red and yellow. One of the characteristics that make this a popular species is the relatively little time it takes to reach maturity. About 90 days after planting seeds, you could see large flower heads towering over you. Cultivars within this species range in height from 18 to inches and are well suited to Mediterranean climates.
Another annual sunflower, the Mexican sunflower Tithonia rotundifolia 'Aztec Sun' , produces numerous blooms from midsummer through midfall. This multibranching sunflower can reach 48 to 72 inches tall in coastal climates.
Beach sunflower Helianthus debilis , like common sunflower, is another type that blooms from midsummer through early fall, but it is perennial rather than annual. Yellow blooms appear on its multiple branches. This species is recommended for U.
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