My family and I live in Minnesota on less than an acre of land. My husband is a big fan of gardening and has worked hard to create a beautiful landscape in our yard, which includes various flowers and plants, apples trees, a cherry tree, blueberry and blackberry bushes, a strawberry patch, and a good sized vegetable garden. Most of the backyard is fenced in and provides privacy, except for the North side which is surrounded by a three-foot tall ugly chain-link fence. Most of it is hidden by the plants and bushes in the yard, but we wanted to hide the rest of it and provide more privacy for that side of the yard. After some research, we decided that sunflowers were the way to go.
We bought several packages of seeds for Mammoth sunflowers that were expected to reach 12-13 feet tall. We thought this would be perfect for our privacy and would be pleasant to look at as well. So, with the help of my daughter, we planted over 300 seeds in pots and kept them in our greenhouse. A few weeks later, they began to sprout, and a few weeks after that more than 200 of them were about a foot tall and ready to be planted in the ground. We planted them in two rows on the outside of the fence and watched them grow.
Storms and strong winds came, causing a few of them to fall or break, so we tied them to the fence with twine. They continued to grow and reached 8-14 feet tall! Neighbors and passersby would often comment on their growth progress and how they beautified the neighborhood.
Finally, and sadly, the summer season is nearing the end and the sunflowers have reached the end of their life.
We decided to harvest them. First we cut the heads off the stem and cleaned all the flower pedals off. Then we rubbed them with our fingers to loosen the seeds and collected them by size in buckets. We harvested over eight gallons of seeds! We seasoned and baked the larger ones for our consumption and the smaller ones we dried out and will use them to feed our chickens and fill the bird feeders in our yard. We also saved 300 seeds to use again next year.
It was a fun experience that brought the family together working on a fun project.
– Pam Larson, JETPUBS Inc.