I woke up this morning and looked out the window at falling snow. The interesting thing was I had visions of Sunflowers in my mind. I stood at the upstairs window looking down into the garden seeing the Sunflowers of last season, now tall dark brown sentinels and totally covered with snow.
The flowers have been long gone for months and the birdies ate the last of the seeds in early November.
I started thinking of the many varieties I love to grow each year. They are the easiest of all flowers and command such attention.
Planting Sunflowers is simple. First go to your favorite garden center. They will have more choices of Sunflower seeds than you can imagine. Look on the back of the package, not all Sunflowers are 8 ft. giants. I always plant the tallest varieties in the back of the garden and the shorter bushier types near the front.
Soil is the most important step, make sure you do not skimp or do in a half hearted manner. Prepare the soil with compost, bone meal and blood meal and make sure you mix together well getting all of the clumps or clods of soil out. Now the fun part, the planting. I always try to borrow a neighbor child or niece or nephew to help with this task, because they are so amazed at how quickly and how very large Sunflowers become. We make holes with the tip of my trusty Smith and Hawkins "Poacher Spade". We make these holes shallow and about 10" apart. We then put three seeds into each hole. The saying is "one for the earth, one for the crow and one is left just to grow" The chosen child and I then cover the holes, and put 3" of small bark mulch on top of the newly planted area. We then water with a gentle stream of water from the hose.
Within one week the Sunflowers are waking up and poking their heads out of the soil. It is magic and the process of their journey from flowering to their fruition of large droopy seed heads for all of our birdie friends, is a wonderment of nature that I repeat year after year.
No comments:
Post a Comment