Welcome back to our look at fall flowers/plants that look great in a vase. We’ve spent the last couple of Garden Gossip columns looking at various perennial sunflowers. This week our focus will shift to their larger and gaudier annual relative.
Annual sunflowers (Helianthus annus), just like their perennial brethren, are native to the Americas. Historical records suggest that sunflowers were first domesticated as early as 3,000B.C. in Mexico. Sunflowers were one of the plants that early European explorers fell in love with and took back to the Old World. Russia in particular adopted the sunflower and Russian breeders did some amazing work in the area of sunflower breeding and hybridization. Peter The Great of Russia really lead the Russian sunflower invasion after he fell in love with the golden flowers on a trip to Holland. Back in Russia the Orthodox Church allowed the consumption of sunflowwer oil during Lent while all other oils were strictly forbidden. Needless to say, the Russian people were quick to embrace the plant and its importance in Russian culture grew quickly. To this day, Mammoth Russian Sunflower remains one of the industry standards for large headed varieties. Russian immigrants to the New World brought their improved varieties back with them and from there the commercial cultivation of sunflowers in North America really took off. In today’s world, sunflowers are one of the largest edible oil commodities there are with annual production averaging around ten percent of the world’s total oilseed production. In 1946 Canada got in on the action and developed one of North America’s first and most innovative seed crushing plants. Currently, sunflowers are an important Canadian agricultural crop with two varieties being grown. The confectionery seed has a striped hull and is used for snacking and baking. The oilseed varieties generally have solid black hulls and are grown to be pressed into oil for human consumption or to be crushed into a meal used in livestock feeds. The birdseed market is also a rapidly growing market for Canadian grown oilseed varieties.
Of course, there is one more use for sunflowers that is also growing quite rapidly. That would be the ornamental sunflowers that are grown for both their impressive garden presence and for their spectacular vase filling capabilities. These plants come in a multitude of sizes and colours and are the sunflowers we are most interested in discussing today. The large headed confectionery and oilseed sunflowers also make terrific long-lasting cut-flowers but it is the smaller and more vividly coloured hybrids that really excel when the fall decorating bug bites you.
As native plants, sunflowers adapt quite easily to most area growing conditions. One thing that sunflowers do demand is sun, and lots of it. Ideally your sunflowers should be exposed to at least eight hours of direct sunlight every day. This love of sunshine is taken to an extra level where sunflowers are concerned. Sunflowers exhibit a trait known as heliotropism. Sunflower buds face east every morning and follow the sun across the sky to end up facing west every evening. Over the course of the night the buds slowly return to an east facing position where they wait for sunrise and another day of sun-worshiping. Strangely, once the sunflowers are full opened, they no longer track the sun and remain stuck in a generally east facing direction. Since the opened flowers are basically stationary, many gardeners are not even aware of how much movement their plants can engage in.
Other than sun, sunflowers prefer an area with protection from strong winds. They also like soils that are close to neutral and can grow quite happily in slightly acid or alkaline situations. Being heavy feeders, sunflowers appreciate rich soils that have been amended with plenty of compost or manure early in the season. Early in their development, regular watering is beneficial but since sunflowers develop long tap roots they are able to withstand fairly prolonged periods of drought. Seeds for annual sunflowers can be planted directly as soon as the soil has warmed up in the spring. Bean planting weather makes great sunflower planting weather. For extra early flowers, start a few seeds indoors in March in Jiffy pots and plant them out as soon as all danger of frost has passed. By using a mix of varieties you can begin cutting sunflowers for your vase in early August and some varieties will bloom right to frost. Most sunflowers will re-bloom and will quickly replace any initial blooms that you remove for indoor enjoyment with many more lateral blooms. Planting a short row of sunflowers can easily keep you in cut-flowers all autumn. I can’t imagine a better flower to plant for cutting.
