Make a Garden
Sunflowers are easy to grow from seed. Ranging from classic yellow to rusty red, green, and white, there are varieties like towering Giant Sunflowers and fluffy Teddy Bear Sunflowers. They’re excellent for any space and enchanting to watch as the flower heads follow the sun.
To grow sunflowers, start by sowing seeds in 10cm pots filled with damp soil, making a small hole just over 1cm deep. Place a seed in each hole and cover it with soil, then cover the pot with a clear bag or place it in a greenhouse. After germinating in about 7 days, begin hardening off the sprouts by taking them outside for two weeks. Finally, plant them 45cm apart in clear, weed-free soil after the last frost, and feed with fertiliser twice - in mid-June and August, while providing support stakes as needed.
Sow sunflowers into 9cm pots or straight into the ground.
Position: Sunflowers like to grow in full sun in well-drained soil. Feeding: Once the flowers appear, feed sunflowers weekly with a high-potassium feed (tomato feed is ideal). Watering: For established plants a deep watering once a week.
Sunflowers are sown from mid-April to the end of May to avoid any cold spells.
Water Sunflowers frequently in the Summer months and feed before flowering.
Collect sunflower seeds for next year or feed them to the birds.
Sunflowers don’t usually get sick since they're pretty tough. But sometimes they can get leaf spots or turn a bit yellow. They might also catch rust, wilt, or that powdery white stuff. The big baddie for them is this thing called Sclerotinia stem rot, or white mould, which can mess up their leaves, stems, and roots. Swapping out what you plant and not going crazy with a watering can help keep this nasty stuff away.
