Giant Mamoth Sunflowers

[moonlilyhead]

We grow the Russion mammoths and sell the dried heads for a buck each at the farmer's market. They sell out every time. The "town" folks think it's quaint to use a whole head for bird food. We get two crops a year and can sell the last bunch right before the market closes up in October.

[bluelacedredhead]

$1 a head? Wait til I tell my chickens that they owe me $1 a head for Mammoth Russians,

[moonlilyhead]

I WISH I had chickens to feed them to. I want some chickies!

[flowerpower]

All the varieties I grew last yr were multi-stepped, smaller types. So the flowers were hanging to the ground. The hens could just help themselves. I have to grab a few packs of the Giant Grey Stripe, so I can have some lgr heads to dry.

[doccat5]

If you want to save some of those seeds cover the heads with old pantyhose or knee highs. Since I'm retired I have a lot of my former coworkers and girlfriends saving me their runnered ones. Works like a charm and it makes it easier to get the seeds out. Just rub the surface with a glove or bang the back of the flower on a hard surface. I planning on making a sunflower "fort" for my grand babies this year.

[moonlilyhead]

Hey! That's a great idea!! I usually leave some on the stalks for the birds and chop the others down and put in storage. But they take up a lot of space and can easily get mold.
So excited....

[Alan]

Im going to plant quite a few varieties of sunflowers this year, everytime I see a new variety on a seed rack i'm sure to pick it up and I'll just mix them up with the saved seeds that I have from last year and plant them all together, we sold quite a few this year as cut flowers and then sold the dried heads like crazy in the fall for those who wanted to use them for bird feed. Another one of those cheap and easy alternative market crops that I'll probably grow for the rest of my life.

[sandbar]

Are these hybridized sunflowers? Or, will I be able to save seed for next year from this year's crop?

BTW, where have folks been purchasing seed for this sunflower?

[Alan]

The ones that I provide seed for here are mixed varieties that I let openly hybridize and don't really grow in isolation, but you can save seed every year and let them keep crossing back and forth, or at least thats what i've been doing with them, if I see something I really like I would probably try to segregate it out of the mix and come up with an equivellent open pollinated type.

[Alan]

oh sorry, you were talking about the mamoth grey stipe type sunflowers I believe. I buy mine in bulk here at a local seed shop but they are pretty common on the internet and I also often see them on the Burpee racks at Wal-Mart.

-Alan

[sandbar]

Thanks, Alan. Wally World garden employees tell me they're trying to get the garden center set up by the end of the week. I didn't tell them it would help to toss all that Christmas stuff they have on the shelves in the garden center right now ...

[bluelacedredhead]

I have a bag of Velvet Queen & Lemon Queen seed mixed together from a few years ago. Seems to me that the Lemon Queen must be the dominant colour? Or maybe I just managed to save more Lemon Queen than Velvet, cuz most of the blooms last year were yellow?
But they are pretty nonetheless and once they began to bloom, it took a particularly nasty frost to stop them!

[flowerpower]

The giant grey stripe are 10 for a buck seeds in the dollar store. I like to mix them up too. I have a big bag filled with all different types. I do not grow the Teddy Bear types. I want the real "sunflower" look. And I don't think I have white for some reason.