Transplanting Sunflowers

Sunflowers are not only beautiful of to look at but can serve other purposes as well.  Ever go to the grocery store and look at the peanut butter in the organic section?  Sunflower butter is insanely expensive.  But it is also a lot of work.  I like them because they add some variety to the landscape.  Today I wanted to share with you how we were able to successfully transplant sunflowers that were fully developed and rooted.   

When we bought our seeds for our garden, we also bought sunflower seeds.  I had such nice plans of a nice little patch of tall beautiful sunflowers in our front yard.  The deer destroyed those plans.  One Friday night we were commenting on how nicely the sunflowers were growing and that Saturday morning, Aaron found out from his father they the tops were all eaten off.  So we sighed in frustration and started thinking about where to put them next year.   

Luckily, Aaron’s uncle grew two long rows of nothing but sunflowers.  He gave us some that were already started to plant in our yard.  As you can see from our pictures, they have flourished.  When they were first brought to our house, the flowers were about 2-3 feet tall.  We didn’t think they were going to do anything.  They were laying on the ground (you can see the bend in the bottom of the stems).  They are now over 6 feet tall.  Our secret is that we did nothing.  There is no special soil or any fertilizer.  Dirt and a little water was about all that was done and after that we left them to either thrive or die.   

We are able to do this because we luckily live in an area with good soil.  Our hands off method might not work for everyone.