Sunflowers

[castanea]

This has been a bad year for gardening.

I grew 5 different varieties of giant sunflowers this year. I went out to harvest seeds this morning. Despite the fact that this is a drought year in California, we did have a couple of heavy momentary downpours of rain within the last 6 weeks and the result is a lot of moldy sunflower seeds

[richardw]

Thats why i like to select for plants that have seedheads that hang facing straight down that way that shed water though i haven't had to worry about that for a year or so,also to stop sparrows being able to get at the seed.

[castanea]

Mine did hang straight down but the upper side of the seedhead started to deteriorate very quickly

[kazedwards]

I have had several frost and the sunflowers are first killed but have formed seeds. Is it to late to harvest the seed?

[philagardener]

You won't know if you don't try :>) Should be OK if they were relatively mature before the frost hit.