Hello, all,

I'm new to gardening, and this forum has been invaluable over the past year or so as I've been feeling my way. This is my first post, so please be kind.

I planted some Burpee Aztec Gold hybrid sunflowers this past April (direct sow). With the rainy spring we've had here in the Philadelphia area, everything has grown quite large, very quickly. Even so, these sunflowers are a little crazy! They flowered about three weeks ago, and were immediately swarmed with bugs. After a few days, the center "eye" grew huge, the petals started wilting off, and the whole thing started drooping. The other day, I noticed that the small florets on each seed had begun to fall. Now the back of the flower head is starting to brown, the petals are completely wilted, and black-striped seeds have formed on the perimeter of the flower head. I pulled one out earlier today, and found a full-size seed inside. The most central seeds have fainter black stripes than the outer ones.

These things can't be ready to harvest, can they? It's only the second week of July!

Any advice from more veteran sunflower growers would be appreciated.

(I'd love to post some photos, but I'm not sure how to.)