Hi guys

I have a wee bit of a problem.

Can someone look at the two most recent pictures on my garden journal and tell me if you think the sunflowers in the pictures are dwarfs, or if it's normal for what should be a 6ft tall plant to get a flower bud at a foot tall? I have a Gigantus (12ft at maturity IIRC) this year that has a bud at about 3ish feet, so maybe last year's plant did bud at 1ft of hight and I just don't remember it.

I grew a lovely 6ft tall red sunflower (moulin rouge or velvet queen) last year and at its base I had a dwarf for a while (golden hedge I think - 1ft tall, large leaves, one big head and a thick stem). I saved seeds from the red from when the dwarf was in bloom and the seeds on the red could possibly be crossed, and seeds from flowers that bloomed after the dwarf fell victim to the local wildlife, so the seeds from the red's flowers "ought" to have grown true to the source plant.

I saved the seeds in different packets, I labeled them so I knew what was what, and yet somehow at some point it looks like I must have goofed. I don't know if I put some seeds from a hybridized flower in a "pure" packet when I re-packeted some of the seed, or I mislabeled some of them, or.. (shrug), in any event plants I'm growing from a non-hybrid packet are looking like they may be hybrids.

I swapped some of the seeds I was sure wasn't hybrids. That's the problem part. If these are going to be dwarf plants then it's probable that some of the plants growing from the swapped seed are going to be dwarfs too rather then the 6ft tall plants they ought to be and I should let the people I swapped with know about the mix up.

~sigh~