Greetings, I planted 6 different varieties of Sunflowers this spring in the first week of June. There are only a few of the smaller varieties that have even set flowerheads. Of these, only about 6 have actually opened and they are small. None have ripened into seedheads. How many degrees of frost does it take to kill a sunflower??? Our growing season here in the Battlefords is fast coming to an end. I have attached a picture of my 15 Russian Mammoths! Wow...they are huge. No flowers yet. I am growing them for the seedheads. I feed birds all winter and want to wire the heads onto trees for the birds to pick at. I would like to grow the shortest possible sunflowers (due to the nasty winds) that produce the biggest seedheads. Any ideas??? Thanks for looking! Andrea
There is nothing that I have found to rush sunflowers into blooming, they seem to bloom when they want. The onley thing that I can say is to do, it to plant earlier. I think that 1 frost might have an affect on them, and make them slow down on growing and the 2nd frost might make it stop growing.
Thanks for your reply! I guess it would be easier to protect them from frost in the spring, when they are small, than in the autumn! ;>
My mammoth sunflowers have already flowered, and I have chopped them down. I put the seed heads up and I love looking at birds eating them. :) If they do flower can ya' post some pictures? And if you dont have flowers then you have a pretty tall green wall to look at. :)
Have you tried T&T Seeds? http://www.ttseeds.com/PHP/nav2.php?mnav=1&mcat=B&mgrp=34B They have good stuff for the prairies. This one looks good: http://www.ttseeds.com/PHP/mcat.php?mitem=A495&mnav=1&mcat=B&mgrp=34B
Thanks very much for the links, KevinD! Sorry it took me so long to notice your reply! And yes, I will be ordering a smack of them there Sunflower Big Smiles!!! Andrea
So did the sunflowers bloom?!?!? :D :) :D We had a real late frost, about a few weeks ago was out first. It would of been plenty of time for a sunflower to bloom for me.
Hey Blake09, we lost our 12 - 13 foot tall mammoth sunflowers to a killing frost when only a couple of them had started to flower! :< The stalks were soooooooo large that my husband had to chop them down with an axe! I'll try again next year! Thanks, Andrea
