When Burpee introduced Pike's Peak sunflowers as having the largest seeds for snacking (claimed up to 1½ inches long) I was excited to order them, for the extra long seeds. Burpee still offers Pike's Peak, with apparently the same original claims. I wasn't too concerned about the claimed height of 12 to 15 feet, because I could use a step ladder to harvest them, or use pole pruner that I have to simply snip the heads off and let them fall to the ground when I needed to harvest them.

I assumed that the "up to 1½ inches long" claim implied variability, and my strategy was going to be to save the longest seeds, hopefully 1½ inches long or longer, and plant them to develop my own strain of super-long seeded snack sunflowers. I planted a double row of them the full width of my North Garden at the northern edge of the garden, to keep them from shading my other garden plants.

They grew 8 to 10 feet tall, significantly less than the claimed height of 12 to 15 feet, but I had planted them fairly close together, and only lightly fertilized and watered them, so that was "forgivable". They were, for the most part, single-stalk, although a few of them developed a side branch "sucker".

The big disappointment was their seeds were uniformly 1 inch long, with no significant variability. So my plans to select for super length seeds were thwarted. The birds loved them, though, and they were eventually the basis for a big compost pile. I am toying with the idea of growing some of the extra-tall sunflowers this Summer.

Happy New Year !!!

ZM

'Hopi Black Dye' sounds cool.

Wish I had more sunny space to plant a bunch of different types to see the differences. Was thinking just to see how big I can get, but now want to avoid "pollen free" types and make sure they could at least provide food for wildlife. Now to find a way for the seedlings to not get killed the first48 hours.

Planning maybe 'Tarahumara' for a white seeded, 'Hopi Black Dye' for a black seeded, and one monster type.

I have 75 feet I want to "screen" with sunflowers. They will get plenty of water, but I know they won't get as much sun as they like. It will be filtered sun. I plan to grow a variety of sunflowers: American Giant, Mammoth, Gray-Striped, Red Velvet and Autumn Beauty. I have always wanted to grow white ones and I had 3 come up and bloom one year. The birds LOVED it and I didn't get to save one seed! I laid the head on the picnic table to dry out and in one afternoon all the seeds were gone--picked clean. Hindsight, right? I've never had that happen before or since.

I've grown Titan. I liked it. The plants get tall and it gets big heads with reasonably sized seeds. It's an heirloom (or, at least Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds sells it, and I don't think they like to sell hybrids). I tried White-seeded Giant, too, but it didn't have giant heads (although it was tall and sprouted easily); the seeds were not big. Mongolian Giant didn't sprout for me. Mammoth Gray Striped is great, and I like it most in most regards, except it falls over too easily. So, maybe start it in a cup and transplant it deep if that's your concern, too. Titan has attractive seeds, but they're a bit shorter than Mammoth Gray striped. Mongolian Giant has long seeds, but they're thin.

if you just want something super tall, try Skyscraper, maybe. I haven't grown it, as I'm into head-size and seed-size more than plant height. In fact, dwarf sunflowers with giant heads and large seeds would be great, IMO.

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