Beginner Gardening: My sunflowers look terrible and there's worms in them!, 3 by Heidi21001

Heidi21001 wrote:
I've never grown a plant without it dying quickly and tragically. This year we tried sunflowers for the first time. They started off well, not expecting much since the seeds were old to begin with. My mom tilled up the ground next to the garage and we tossed in a bunch of seed. They grew well and fast and we ended up staking them and then tieing them to protect them from the wind.

The last couple of weeks they started to droop and today we cut off the heads to discover worms and black fuzzy stuff on and in them.

I'm pretty sure these are armyworms, but I don't know how we could have avoided them much better. We have several bird feeders around the other side of the garage (about 100 feet away) and mom put some sevin(sp?) powder on them when they were smaller.

The black fuzzy stuff - I have no idea. Can we still use the seeds and work around the worms and fuzz? Are the seeds still good (not all have holes in them)?

What should we do to preserve some of these seeds to try again next May?

Edit: I should add that we are in Maryland halfway between Baltimore City and Delaware

This message was edited Sep 7, 2015 8:58 PM