Sunny Sunflowers for the Summer Season

If you're thinking about wildscaping an area, try a simple plant with simple needs that provides nutrition for a wide range of creatures -- the very simple sunflower. It's a quick growth plant, used to make oil, snacks (high in calcium, but watch out for the fat content!), squirrel food, and bird feed. Best of all, it's a cheap and almost trouble-free plant for your garden! One variety -- the "Sungold" reportedly keeps away deer. The Coastal Hydro Seeding Services in Canada is one source of this seed.

Originally a hardy prairie plant of North America, the cheerful sunflower has been cultivated and exported to almost all parts of the world. There's very few places where some variety doesn't grow. Both annual and perennial varieties are available in a range of heights from 2 feet tall to over 10 feet tall. Although we think of them as yellow flowers, modern horticulturists have bred a full range of colors -- from white through a deep red. They're a quick fix for damaged landscapes since their rapid growth and deep roots make them good for stabilizing soils on slopes. There's literally a sunflower for every need.

As their name suggests, these plants are sun-lovers (the blossoms turn to face the sun as it moves across the sky) -- so don't put them in a shady area. They like warmth, so wait until the frosts have ended in your area before planting. I'll confess to being terribly lazy and planting some of the oil sunflower seeds that came in the bags of bird food. They grow beautifully, though they're not as spectacular as some of the cultivars.

A crop of sunflowers can turn your backyard into bee, bird, squirrel, and human Snack Heaven. Most of the songbirds eat sunflower seeds -- most of the "trash birds" (like grackles) don't. But there's some surprising uses for sunflowers -- including serving the unopened buds boiled like artichokes!

Let's start off with a "Sunflower" for the winter season -- http://ticnet.softseek.com/Games/Card_an... "Mount Sunflower Solitaire" -- a card game to amuse you while you're waiting for your seeds to grow.

http://www.seattleflowers.com/featured/s... A page of delightful information about sunflowers, including sunflower trivia.

http://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/... Sunflowers do have some traditional medicinal properties (and can be used as a tobacco substitute). Here's what an amazing online herbal says about sunflowers.

http://www.rain.org/~philfear/sunflowerh... Want an unusual garden this year? Grow a sunflower house for your kids (or for the kid in you!) (note: birds would love it, too!)

Go To Page: 1 2