A Simple Guide To Growing Sunflowers 

Thanks, I'm glad you've enjoyed my video, this is my concise sunflower guide, I also have a very in depth series of videos about how to grow the tallest possible sunflowers.

Same for me, I always grow lots in my garden, I love how tall they grow, I use them as a back drop to my garden beds.

@@Gardeningat58N Good idea. I may plant some behind my tomatoes.

Yes they self seed very easily, and as squirrels sometimes bury them for later, but then forget where they buried them, they help to plant them for you.

That's my kind of gardening! Non committal.. lol

Sunflowers are such great plants for kids as they can see them grow from a small seed into large plants in just one summer. Is it the young plants that get killed or the flowers? If its the young plants then your best growing them indoors until they are about a foot high and then plant them out as larger more established plants. If its the flowers then its a little more tricky, yes you can try strong smelling essential oils as this will put them off eating them. Another option is chilli extract, but make sure your son doesn't touch the flowers with chilli extract as it will cause a burning sensation. Another less pleasant option is to use garlic extract or urine extracts from predator animals. Another option is ultrasonic scares which have motion sensors, this cannot be heard by us adults, however I know from experience that unfortunately the noise can be unpleasant for children.

@@Gardeningat58N do you have a video or can you explain how to use/where to apply the essentials oils or chilli extract? thanks! xx

The main cause is too little light, also high temperatures can cause it as well. Make sure your plant gets as much sunlight light as possible, and is in a cooler location. A lack of wind can also cause this, when young make sure it's exposed to some wind, this will cause it to grow less tall, but with thicker stems. If you don't have much wind then use a fan or shake the plant a few times a day. But avoid wind once it's a tall plant otherwise it will get blown over.

Sunflowers like a lot of sunshine, so make sure they are in a location where they can receive as much as possible. Its hard to say why your plants are always dying, there could be a number of different reasons, but either over or under watering is the most likely cause, especially if they are grown in pots.

It's hard to tell by looking at the seeds, you will have to wait until it flowers to know what variety it is. Single flowered varieties are much more common, as are yellow ones, so chances are it's one of the single flowerd yellow varieties.

It depends on what type of sunflower you want to grow, garden centres or online seed retailers are the best place to look. There are two main types of sunflower, single stemmed or multi-stemmed, single stemmed will grow tall and have one very large flower, multi-stemmed will branch and have lots of flowers over a longer period, although the flowers are usually smaller. You can also get dwarf sunflowers which are only 1 foot tall, giants that are over 12 foot tall and there is also a wide variety of colours, mostly of yellows and reds.

It will depend a bit on your climate and also the time of year, I would deep water once or twice a week at around 2 gallons per watering until they are about two foot tall. From two foot to four foot tall water at about 4 gallons per watering. Once at six foot I would water every other day at 3 gallons and continue at that rate, unless its a really big plant, at which rate I would consider increasing it to 4 or 5 gallons. If you have rain though or cool cloudy weather you won't need to water as much, they are fairly drought tolerant, but will wilt and grow much shorter without a good water supply. Also if you have clay soil and you find that the water is just running off the surface you may need to use mulch or reduce the flow rate of your drip line and have it on for a longer duration to compensate. I also have an in-depth video series on my channel about how to grow the biggest possible sunflowers which you may find interesting.

@@Gardeningat58N So we are looking at upwards of 5Gal per plant every other day once mature. Wow... so if I had 10 plants (which is what I was planning), we are talking about 50 gallons of water every other day?? WHOA! Lol.

@@utrutr6013 yes if you have large plants and it's hot and sunny they will be very thirsty, they can do with much less water, but they won't grow as big.

Lack of germination is usually either, compost too wet, compost dried out very quickly, or old seeds.