Sunflowers

JohnM20

I planted some 'Red Sun' sunflower seeds in spring as I thought that the colour  as shown on the packet was quite attractive. They are also said to be 1.5 metres tall. The problem is that of the 15 plants that I have, only one has turned out to be red (ish), all the others are yellow and most of the plants are well over 1.8 metres tall with five of them in excess of 2.4 metres, (8ft), and still growing!!! They are quite magnificent plants but just not what they are supposed to be.

The seeds were packaged by a very well known seed company but were given away free with Gardeners World magazine  in April so I haven't got any grounds for a complaint. Has anyone else had and grown the same seeds from Gardeners World?

Whittakerr

why should you complain? in your own words they are quite magnificent plants.

Takethedogalong

Not the GW offer, but I have often found sunflower seeds a bit hit and miss. Know the red variety, but don’t think I had much success. Got some big yellow ones in though, and they are coming along quite nicely, but not as far on as yours👍

JohnM20

Yes they are magnificent plants but they are not the colour that we wanted and the size of them makes them unsuitable for where they are. 

brue

You have done better than me, I bought a packet of dark red sun flower seeds, carefully grew them on in the greenhouse, planted them out and they were eaten overnight! Managed to save two and they got eaten the following night. So no sunflowers at all this year. Although that wasn't the fault of the seed company some gardeners prefer certain companies to others. Can't name on here it wouldn't be fair as obviously packing faults can occur too!

I've mentioned on another thread that half price seeds are available at garden centres just now and on line. Go get next year's sunflowers and hope for the best. .🌻🌻🌻

JohnM20

Some of my maximum height 1.5m sunflowers have now reached 2.8m (9ft 5") and I think are still growing!! 

This morning, looking out of the window, I saw a squirrel climbing up one of the smaller sunflowers, (only 6 feet high). What was the funniest but also annoying was that said squirrel quickly chewed through the stem of one of the fully open flowers, about 6" diameter, and ran off along the fence with it in his/her mouth The way it was done so quickly and deliberately makes me think it had done it before somewhere. I just don't want it doing it again with my flowers. 

ABM

JohnM20,  Why don't you use the coming winter ()  to carve yourself a few ' proper sized '   wooden sunnies and pop them on top of a number of  green polythene tubes  ??  They should satisfy your colour wishes and, hopefully,  deter young Nutkin !!