Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Future Mammoths (I Hope)

Almost a month ago, I planted a pack's worth of mammoth sunflower seeds along the fence in the front yard. Most of them went into a planter area that used to have a bunch of other bulb type plants.

As you can see in the picture below, the ground was pretty dry. I wasn't keeping up on watering the area. I put seeds in about 8-10 different spots in this section, and then watered it a lot.


Almost a month later, I have only one lone flower that's doing awesome. I put my shoe in the picture for scale, so you can see how big it's gotten. When it was only a few inches tall, it was getting eaten by bugs quite a bit. In fact there was another flower shoot coming up at the same time, but it was getting eaten even more, and it stopped growing.

This is that other flower shoot. It's finally grown some new leaves, but it's still quite tiny. As long as the bugs don't eat the leaves, and it gets plenty of water, I expect it should be able to catch up to the other one.

In another spot in the front yard, I put some seeds, and this lone flower shoot came up. It too got devoured by bugs, but it remains green, and I try to remember to water it as much as the others. Because it's still green, I'm hoping it will also soon sprout new leaves and begin to grow.

It would be great to see these grow into huge sunflowers. They're suppose to get up to 8 feet tall or something like that. I'll keep you updated.

In other planting news, we still haven't gotten a chance to fill that other planter box in the back yard yet. Things have been super busy. Hopefully soon we can get the dirt in the box, and get some plants growing in them.

5 comments:

Kristi said...

Look into Neem Oil. Its an organic sort of pesticide, not poisonous, a little smelly, it repels the bugs pretty good, and its something you keep applying as needed. Good job. Out of the 2 dozen sprouted vegetables we had, only 4 remain. sad face.

Unknown said...

The only thing I can grow really well is mold. (c:

colleeeen said...

If you take care of them, those mammoths can get to 12 feet high. I planted them in a square so the boys will have a sunflower "house" to hide in this summer. I've had some luck in sprouting seeds in pots and then transplanting them once they are big enough to be less tempting to bugs - bugs LOVE baby plants.

Ken said...

Kristi: Thanks, I'll look into that. 4 is better than none.

Mom: Me too.

Colleeeen: I'd love for it to get 12 feet tall, but I'll be happy just to have it mature and bloom, no matter how tall it gets. The 4 in a square sounds like a fun idea.

Mr. Mustachio said...

Would it be wrong of me to tell you that my sunflowers sprouted up on their own this year, and are about 6 feet tall already?