Last year while going for some
variety on muffin baking, I've bought sunflower and pumpkin seeds from Tesco
for the add-on. Seeing them are raw, I've planted them to see if they'll grow,
and they did! Regardless of what kind of sunflower variety it was, I was very
looking forward to see them bloom :)
Here's them in 3 weeks after
germination, I've put them on wet wool, they had no shell, so the water
absorption was very good and they germinated overnight, just like growing tauge
:p They’re out of my expectation though, because I never thought almost
all of them will get germinated. So there was so many seedling and I had no
idea which one should be kept, so eventually I kept most of them, I have like 6
sunflowers survived =D
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| 3rd week seedling |
Another picture showing them at 20
days (~3 weeks). They’ve grown up to a foot now. I had moved them to bigger
pot, still they sharing the same pot though. Looking up internet suggested the
sunflower to be planted on ground where they should be separated far enough so
they get less compete between each other can grow healthy. Well my house didn’t
have the space >_<
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| 20 days old sunflowers |
At the 4th week, their
leaves already pushing each other apart. I had some other sunflowers growing
individually in other small pot though. But this pot will be sharing until they
bloom. It was raining season and they always get bend by the raindrops. 3-4
weeks old and very vulnerable to the lethal raindrops. I used wooden stick to support them. At close inspection, I
saw one injured spider dwelling in a leave from one of the sunflower. It pulled
in the leaves and stick it together to form curved, protected and safe home. I didn’t
hush it away though J
glad to keep it as guardian for little pest that troubling my sunflower. One of
the pest was leaf hopper, green one and red one. They suck the sap out of the
plant and drip it out from their bud as protection fee for the ants. Stupid
combination :’(
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| 4th week |
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| Dwelling spider |
At the 5th week, as you
can see, they were growing taller and more leaves. They start not getting
enough sunlight, so I put them on top of my concrete fence so they can …reach
for the sun!!! They were very sunlight craving buddies. In morning they always
facing to the sun and when evening when I check on them once more, they were
facing sun, at the west side. I wonder what happen during night, they must had
been move their head to the east by themselves. Flower buds already appear on
this week.
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| 5th week |
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| Flower bud appeared |
On sixth week, no more leaves
growing from the top because the flower bud already appear, one for each plant,
so the leaves just growing in size. And the flower head just growing in size
too, developing the structure inside.
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| 6th week |
On seventh week, the flower head
started to grow away from the nearest leaf, growing like a giraffe neck. The leaves
were strategically arranged. If the sunlight came from top, by speculates the
leaves arrangement from the top, you can see that all leaves will expose to the
sunlight.
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| 7th week |
On eighth week, very obvious the
flower head had grown that big and tall. Well it just one meter tall though. I
wished I can grow a tall variety like sunflower mammoth that shown on internet,
reaching 4-6 meters and that, but really I did have the seeds, and the mammoth
was dead hitting by strong raindrops :’( also I didn’t have the land to plant
it :) See the close up picture of the flower head a few days after eighth week
:p In the picture was the one growing individually in smaller pot instead of
sharing.
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| 8th week |
On ninth week, which was Chinese New
Year 1st day, the flower head petal had started to open. I guess
this variety doesn’t open all in one shot though. The florets on the flower
head started to bloom though, from outer ring to inner, day by day. The rest of
the petals open up on consecutive days, all through the first 3 days of Chinese
New Year. I’ve noticed that when the flower head was going to bloom, it will
stop following the sun =D so if a sunflower head no longer follow sun by that
day, the next day the petal should start open hmmm hmmm
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| CNY 1st day |
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| CNY 2nd day |
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| CNY 3rd day |
At full opening, the petals formed a
diameter of 6.5” across. Luckily the stem of the plant wasn’t heavy and the
plant wasn’t grew too tall, so the small pot with the weight of its soil was
enough to hold stable everything. I was expecting butterfly or bees to come over
to harvest the nectar and help pollinate but at least in day time I’ve seen
none of them came over, so I used a Q-tip and collect and rolled the pollen over
the stigma of the florets hahahahaha
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| Blooms |
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| Not-so-tall |
On 10th week, with the
disaster rain and all that, the sunflower head bend over. Maybe is because the
head had grown heavier too due to the seeds forming inside. One benefit when
growing seeds with drooping head is that the birds will have no place to stand
and dining in our seeds, so it actually is a protection mechanism probably
developed (maybe human selection) by the plant itself.
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| Drooping heads :( |
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| Look sad :( |
The petals dried and withered off
one by one on the floor in a week after bloom. I noticed that the life of the
bloom ended when the florets bloomed to the center of the flower head. So we
can actually know the lifespan of the bloom by looking at the florets progress
in the center.
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| Florets open from the outer ring |
Approximately a month after
withering, the leaves dried up from bottom to top, and the stem followed until
the seed head. I harvested the seeds and noticed the unfertilized seed, just
with empty shells. So many seeds for the next generation, but too bad I had no
place to plant it. By turn over the pot, I saw the root had gone into every
corner of the soil in the pot, even came out at the bottom. So happy and had a very
good experience planting sunflower.
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| Dried seed head |
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| Empty shells |
So I did bought many more seeds. See
down there I had succeed growing sunflower sunspot, with a very big bloom!!!
The seeds were all empty though it looks round (no picture). Also I had grown
two sunflower taiyo, I wanted it to be at least 3 meters tall though, I get
less than a meter tall plant, with 8” petals diameter bloom L still happy though hehe
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| Sunflower sunspot |
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| Sunflower taiyo |
That’s all for the sunflower journal
=P green and nature are the best part of life.
