Sun Flowers - Helianthus Annuus

We have a wedding coming up!  Our daughter, Abigail, will marry Andrew West late this summer.  The wedding will be held at the church, but the reception will take place under a big tent at her grandparents' home.

Abi has chosen to exclusively use local, seasonal flowers, with lots of red, yellow, and orange.  We have contracted with a local florist / farmer for the bulk of the flowers, but my mother-in-law and I are consciously planting late summer / autumn bloomers in anticipation of creating a celebration of color at the party.  Marigolds and geraniums are boldly showing off now and we are diligently dead-heading to keep them blooming.  I hope we can keep them all healthy and beautiful until wedding time.

Today I went in search of sunny spots to plant sun flowers.  The problem?  I'm not sure when to plant them in order to get blooms at the desired time!  I'll plant some now and more in a couple of weeks and hope for the best.

Rouse created a little bed for me in front of the chicken coop, to the right of the door.  It's a bright spot in our shady landscape and the tall sunflowers will be perfect there.  It didn't take long in the progression of the day, though, for us to realize that an overhanging limb was blocking the sun right in the middle of the day.  So up the ladder he went, off came the limb, in poured the sunshine.  It's amazing how the loss of one limb can totally change the feeling of a space, but it makes me smile just thinking about those happy sunflowers!  Autumn Beauty  5' - 7' tall; Blooms in shades of lemon yellow, subtle bronze, rich wine, and bicolors on multiple flowerheads.

As an experiment, I planted a different sun flower mixture along the fence in the sandy soil of the backyard bed. Summertime Mix 4' - 5' tall; Pollen-free, hybrid mixture of colors and forms, single-stemmed and branched flowers.  In front of them I planted a patch of Burgundy Blanket Flower Gaillardia Aristata; Heat, drought, poor soil tolerant, a strong plant that returns each spring.  I also sowed a few of the gaillardia seeds in between the (bolting) cilantro plants  in the bed near the mulch bins.

I already planted Royal Flush sunflower mix seedlings on May 21 at the back of the bed near the leaf mulch bin. They are beginning to bloom, but are nowhere near their advertized 6' height ... "Dazzling 4- to 6-in. sunflowers soar on 6-ft. stalks. Dynamic color combinations—red with red and yellow, rusty reds and yellow—contrast with dark brown centers. Dramatic as cut flowers. Impressive for borders and backgrounds. Happy even in poor soil." Maybe they will do well in poor soil, but what if the challenge is poor sunshine? I suspect that might have something to do with their stunted growth.