My mom has always been interested in all things relating to flowers. Every year in the early days of April, she would drive down to our local gardening store and buy a couple bags of soil and an assortment of flowers to plant in our flower bed in front of our house. She loved to plant daffodils, roses, and tulips. She would pick a warm Saturday morning in April and she would spend the whole morning planting her flowers.
While she always loved planting roses, tulips, and daffodils, she always wanted to plant sunflowers. My mom would always run into problems growing sunflowers with squirrels eating them early on or having them blow over from the wind or a storm. The sunflowers never would last the whole season. But my mom has had enough and she was more determined than ever to grow sunflowers to their fullest potential and have them last the whole season.
Last April, my mom enlisted me to help her grow the sunflowers. With the Covid-19 pandemic at its worst, we both had nothing to do and we can put our full focus on the flower garden. We first worked to space the sunflower seeds about 6 inches apart and 2 inches deep in the bed. We then made sure to water them regularly and monitor their growth. To deter the squirrels from eating them, we found that if we planted thorny or sharp tipped plants around the base of the sunflowers, they will not be a problem. Sure enough, during the whole growing process, we did not see one squirrel attempt to eat our flowers. To keep the sunflowers from blowing over, we used stakes and tied the sunflowers loosely to the stakes which proved to be successful.
In about 3 months, my mom and I were able to grow the sunflowers up to 10 feet and we were able to keep them around without them dying prematurely. This made my mom so happy and it proved to be a very good project during the pandemic.
Jeff Joslyn April 6, 2021