Sunflower Plants

Sometime during the winter of my ninth year was when I first noticed sunflower seeds in paper packets hanging on a rack in the grocery store where my parents shopped.

Roasted and salted in the shell along with the brand name which I believe was Fishers or perhaps Guys was printed on each package.

That was my first taste of sunflower seeds and I thought they were great.

My mother told me that it was a shame to pay a whole nickel for such a small package and that we should grow our own and then roast them.

So during the spring of 1950 we planted the tall growing variety which I think was Russian mammoth and with very little care we raised a bumper crop.

I can remember looking out of the window early one morning and saw that a rather large number of birds were perched on top of most of the seed heads and appeared to be consuming the seeds at an alarming rate.

We rushed outside to scare the birds off and then proceeded to promptly harvest the large flower heads.

Mom salted and roasted the seeds and to this day none have ever managed to taste as good as those that we grew during the first summer of that brand new decade.

If we fast forward almost sixty years to 2008 many gardeners realize that the new sunflower varieties have been developed more for their ornamental beauty than for seed production.

That’s not to say that there are not some great commercial varieties available for field production.

It’s now possible to grow sunflower plants in red, white, various bi-colors and of course yellow in our flower beds with specimens from two feet in height to well over twelve feet.

Be sure to plant them in full sun for best results and enjoy using them as cut flowers.

Consider growing some Russian mammoth plants and then roasting the seeds as I believe that you will think that they are as good as I remember them being.