Sunflowers All Summer

There is nothing that brings smiles like a sunflower.

These beauties are a staple on our farm and I’ve loved experimenting with lots of varieties this year.

Vincent's Choice is the variety of this classic sunny

The Sunflowers we grow are unique from the classic “Mammoth” varieties that tower over your garden in the summer. We choose “pollen-less” varieties that don’t drop little yellow sneeze balls all over your table! I harvest them just as their petals are lifting off the face of the flower and keep them cool so you get to enjoy them for the maximum of time in your home. Typically our sunflowers last over a week in the vase, that's a good investment in cheer!

Classic garden sunflowers are branching varieties, meaning they have one main head and then many additional branches that develop below it. We mostly grow single-stem varieties but have a few favorite branching ones that I’ll highlight below.

White Lite is one of my favorite sunflowers for early summer flowers!

Sunflowers are kind of like goldfish. If you give them a big space, they’ll grow big, but if you give them less, they’ll stay small. You may have noticed that we have small and medium-sized sunflowers so they fit nicely in our bouquets. I do this by planting 3 seeds every 6 inches. Tight spacing means petite sunflowers, give them 12-18” and you can grow a mini tree!

One of the things we do to keep sunflowers all summer is we plant them every 2-3 weeks. This is called "succession planting" which gives us a reliable harvest all summer long. I am actually going to plant my last succession of Red Wave Sunflowers this week!

Procut Plum is always a head turner. Literally. Sunflowers are phototrophic and they follow the sun!

These summer beauties are also remarkably resilient. They can actually handle a light frost and I’ve found with decent soil and watering they are very pest resistant.

Singe Stem Varieties we love:

• White Lite

• White Nite

• Procut Plum

• Procut Peach

• Vincent's Choice

Branching Varieties we love:

Ruby Eclipse

Soraya

If you love sunflowers, check out Sunflower Selections, they have a wide variety of seeds that are so fun to choose from . I've ordered from them a few times and have loved the quality and variety.

Whether you grow your own or enjoy buying them from us I hope you add some sunflowers to your life this Summer, they are serious mood boosters.

Do you have a favorite variety? Let us know in the comments!