sunflower varieties

16 years ago

This year was our first year growing for cutting and selling at farmer's markets. We tried 5 sunflower varieties. Below is a summary of our experiences, and I'd love to have any comments or suggestions. I have a long winter to decide what to grow next year, but it's fun to think of it now while we still have sunflowers blooming to help make the decision.

1) Pro Cut Orange: these grew straight with strong, thick stems and flowered within about 50 days. Single cuts, so once we cut them, we have dying stalks left in ground. Sold them for $2 for one unblemished flower and some goldenrod/and or amaranth. Had more flowering at any one time than we could sell though. Needed to stagger the planting more, or find a florist to sell them to! We did have some problems with poorly formed flower heads, petals opening and forming unevenly/and buds failing to open (cut after first petals started to lift). These did refrigerate well and easily lasted 10 days when cut mid morning.

2) Butter cream (Johnny's): About 5 ft tall branching, pollen-less variety. We are cutting side blooms of these and selling them for around 50 cents each--bouquets of 6 for $3 sell well for us. The stems are weak and fairly thin. We use a rubber band below the flower heads to keep them looking decent at the market. We seem to get about 8-10 side shoots over a 3-4 week period of time.

3) Peach Passion (Johnnys) These stayed under 2 1/2 feet tall and were mostly decimated by insects (spotted cucumber beetle!), sadly. The side shoots weren't long enough for even short bouquets.

4)Vanilla Ice (purchased locally) A white sunflower. Zero germination.

5) Autumn Beauty (purchased locally) These monsters are pushing 8 ft tall, have been blooming for almost 4 weeks and are still going strong. A mix of bi-colors, people seem to be liking these more and more as summer comes to an end. Side shoots average 10 inches long, and make nice bouquets. Have weak stems and heads seem to droop, although the petals are lasting several days. We are doing 6 stems for $3. Some bouquets with about 7 sunflowers and 3-5 amaranth might sell for 5, but people seem reluctant to spend more than that! They do drop pollen, but have been generating a lot of ohhs and ahhs at the market.

Since establishing row space is a huge time sink for us, the single blooming pro cut results in a lower return for us at this time. The drawback to the branchign varities is the weak stem strength though.

Anyone know of good branching varieties with stronger stems?

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Comments (7)

kitkat_oregon
16 years ago
I also grew single stem varieties this year, the pale yellow that I liked best was Lemon Aura, strong but not too thick in the stem. I have found in the past that if the multi stemmed ones are planted too close together, the stems are weaker. I spaced mine, Joker, I think, at about 8 - 10 inches and got good strong stems. With the single stemmed varieties you might try cutting the stem to the ground after harvesting and sowing new seed in between with a compost mulch to give them new food. I have not actually tried this but have spoken to folks who say it works just fine. Kat
thrills
Original Author
16 years ago
Thanks for the successive planting idea. :) I was planning on growing some larkspur early and then putting in sunflowers after the larkspur was all harvested, but it hadn't occurred to me to do the same thing with early sunflowers!

We did plant the branching varieties pretty close together--6 to 8 inches, the same as the single varieties. I wasn't quite sure what to expect.
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thrills
Original Author
16 years ago
Thanks for the successive planting idea. :) I was planning on growing some larkspur early and then putting in sunflowers after the larkspur was all harvested, but it hadn't occurred to me to do the same thing with early sunflowers!

We did plant the branching varieties pretty close together--6 to 8 inches, the same as the single varieties. I wasn't quite sure what to expect.
diggerdee zone 6 CT
16 years ago
Thanks for the reviews! My sunflowers did poorly this year - just too much drought and too little time to water. I was looking forward to my Autumn Beauties, too. I did do another sowing which started off gangbusters, but again, due to lack of rain, they are puttering out. Sigh.

Can you clarify - when you say weak stems, do you mean *just* the side shoots, or all the stems on the multi-branchers?

Thanks,
Dee
thrills
Original Author
16 years ago
Generally all the stems seem pretty weak. Well, really they seem insufficiently strong for the size of the flower head, if that makes sense. It's as though the plants did too well, and the stems didn't keep up with the flower size. OK, that may sound silly, but that's the thought that keeps coming to mind. We had record high rainfall this summer (Midwest).
diggerdee zone 6 CT
16 years ago
No, it doesn't sound silly, and makes perfect sense - I know exactly what you mean. I wonder sometimes how some flowers survive because their heads are too big and heavy for the stems. And when you are growing flowers for cuts, that's definitely something to keep in mind. So thanks again for the review!

:)
Dee
tommyk
16 years ago
We have grown a wide variety of sunflowers in the past. Our favorite has always been "Moulin Rougue" a deep maroon, almost black sunflower. The only problem with it is it drops it's petals easily.

This year we tried a new one . . . "Golden Cheer" a large double sunflower (some people call it "shaggy dog") It has been outstanding with plenty of flowers from one plant. There are numerous side branches that produce large flowers just as big as the main stem. We have been getting $2 a stem and they sell out!

This is one sunflower we will continue to grow and we highly recommend it. Available from Geo Seeds and probably others, but Geo is one of the best seed companies out there.