New to gardening and sunflowers. Need some help.

Hi everyone. New guy here. Got kind of bit by the planting bug this year for the first time ever and decided to give a shot at doing some sunflowers amongst a few other things. This is about the progress I'm making with my sunflowers though and thought some of the experts could give some good advice.

I decided to take the indoor peat pot approach to starting my sunflowers since I live in a country area and my house has some annoying little baby bunnies running amok all hours of the day and night. Initially, I really just wanted to direct sow the seeds but I just didn't want to take my chances.

Anyhow, I attached some pictures showing the progress of the sunflowers and all seems really good so far, for a beginner anyway. Sorry for the quality of the one picture as I was taking it in low light through aquarium glass. But the ones in the aquarium are burpee girasol chianti hybrid sunflowers and the other ones with the popsicle sticks marked sunflower on them are the burpee girasol mammoth ones.

I was taking a look under some of the pots today and happen to notice several of them had about an inch or so of the root coming out of the bottom of the pots. Just one root so far. Is this going to be ok for a while or is this a sign I need to get them in the ground quick? I was just kind of concerned with there being an exposed root, and I know from researching that sunflowers grow very large roots quickly.

I don't mind taking a chance putting them in ground since the rabbits tend to eat longer grass closer to the house and I think they might be ok if they can grow fast enough. Money's kind of tight right now, so I don't really have the means to buy a bunch of fencing and crazy contraptions to keep them out. I'm putting these sunflowers in my front yard around a fence which is relatively close to the road, so I would think that would force the rabbits to stay more to the house and less out in the open.

I don't have any other critters besides the rabbit to worry about, but I don't want to prematurely plant these in the dirt and kill them, but at the same time, I'm really nervous I'm going to kill them in the pots with the roots exposed. I've done some researching for some days now and it seems like I've seen so much info saying not to plant them until their true leaves appear, but with these pots not being really huge makes me kind of nervous they'll rapidly outgrow them before the leaves even show up.

Hope someone could lend some good info on whether or not I should just plant them now, or take my chances waiting. Thanks so much!

What about bird netting when you plant your seedlings out so the bunnies can't get to them?
Just a suggestion..

HI!
Welcome to gardening! It's a love hate relationship with those little critters outside! I have deer who love to eat anything I don't want them too!

Ok - your sunflowers look great.....those pots are little but they are made to be planted directly into the soil so you can wait for the plants to get a little bit bigger before you take them outside.

Another thing you can do it make plastic bag tents over them if you still think they are in danger of rabbits.....since they will be by a fence - you might be able to clothespin a bag and then secure it over the plants (like a greenhouse) and hold it down with rocks....they'd be getting indirect light, plenty of warmth and should grow quickly. You'd need to make sure they had water.....

low cost.....and I don't think the rabbits would eat the plastic...

Candi

Any sort of fence, screening etc can slow the rabbits down, and can be removed when the plants are sturdy enough.

Go ahead and let them grow a couple of leaves after the seed leaves.

If the weather is mild you might move them out into a protected spot for increasing amounts of time in the day, out of full sun but in bright light. Perhaps under the dappled shade of a tree. Start getting the seedlings used to being outside with brighter light and a bit of a breeze, and changing temperature.

Thanks everyone for the nice suggestions. I think right now, my biggest question I have is will the sunflowers still be alright for a while with some of the root creeping out from the bottom of the peat pots? They're not in danger of exposed root are they? A lot of the ones in question are already starting to grow the next set of leaves since posting originally. I'm suprised how fast that happened.

I'm sure I'm making this to be more than it needs to be but I just don't have the means to buy more stuff right now at this very moment anyway and I would hate to see my hard work as a first timer go down the drains. If I lose a few, I can live with it as right now I've got about close to 30 mammoths with a good start in the pots already. If they can hold out for about another week or so with the roots coming out of the bottoms of the pots, then I can do something then.

Also, the weather has been nice here lately, with good sun and temps in the 70's and 80's and I've actually been keeping them out in the full sun from sun up to sun down everyday, ever since they broke the surface of the dirt in the pots, and they seem to be loving it. Maybe a little too much with how fast they're growing. I put them out on my upper balcony of my house high away from pests in trays. They stay in the house until they break the dirt surface.

This message was edited May 24, 2015 10:20 PM

I don't think it will hurt the plants if a little root is showing......it just means that you should get them into the ground sooner rather than waiting....

A week is not a problem with the roots starting to show through the peat pots.

at the time you plant the little plants outdoors into the garden by the fence, when you space the plants out along the fence, I sometimes have to make little MINI greenhouses from old CLEAR plastic juice / drinks containers, remove the cap, cut off the bottom, then when you plant the little seedlings, place one clear plastic container over the seedling, and try push the container into the soil till about an inch down the soil, insert a garden cane down through the bottle top and into the soil, this is to hold the bottle in place and also allows AIR to circulate within the bottle to prevent fugal or mould diseases.
Water around the roots area of the ground BUT don't pour water down into the bottle Depending on the type of sunflower seeds (size) your growing, the cane will be required to help tie in the plants offering them support.
Remove the plastic container soon as the plant is reaching close to the top, or the plant will just twist around the bottle, I like to lift the bottles up for a few days to allow the air get to the stems and foliage to harden them up for facing the next faze without this plastic protection.

Everyone is rooting for you so let us all know how things went.
Best of luck and just enjoy your new entry into gardening.
Kind Regards.
WeeNel.

WeeNel....
Love that idea - way better than my plastic bag idea....I'll have to remember that one!
Thanks for sharing that!

Thanks everyone. I love that idea of the containers. Never would have thought that. I'd assume 2 liter clear bottles would be sufficient to get them to a good size or do I need something bigger?

Also, I thought for the fun of it, I'd like to show a little progress shot of my suns so far. I tried editing the previous post but i couldn't attach pics in edit mode, unless I missed something.

Pretty much only 8 days into the whole thing. Some are at 8 days and some are 7 days. I'm real sorry for the quality of the aquarium glass on these shots. They were just some really old aquariums I had from some years ago that I knew would come in handy some day. Right now, they make a wonderful safe havens for my suns since I can keep them outside all day in the sun and keep screen lids on them to keep the pests out. I wasn't worried how pretty they look though since the main purpose is protection.

I have the pics labeled for the mammoth ones and my chianti hybrid ones.

Seedlings are looking great!

2 liter soda bottles won't last long with a fast growing plant like sunflower. Maybe a week? They grow FAST.

if the Sunflowers are the very tall ones, then Dianna is correct re the size of the bottle, however, there are way more container sizes of bottles andjust search them out,
IF you do use the 2 Ltr size, you can always cut off the narrow cap end and allow the plant to grow right through the plastic.
You only need this type of mini greenhouse untill the plants under this protection are able to withstand a nibble from any animals or insects, Rabbits are more a pest I apreciate that, but once the realise they cant get to the greenery under protection, they hopefully move on. to be fare, rabbits are opportunists and the more you try to confuse them, they get fed up and move along, they have to eat, move and be watchful of any larger animals that would eat the Rabbit.Try sprinkle Black Pepper on the ground too, also I believe Chilli pepper is another helpful idea.
Once the plants are larger, the Rabbits might find they are NOT as nice and tender to eat LOL.

Another tip for seedlings is when scattered into a pot, to germinate and it's a bit cold where they are placed for germination, stick the clear pots onto the pot for some protection and a smaller mini greenhouse, water the pots from below so you dont disturb the seeds when top watering.

I'm a huge believer in reusing anything that can be done and save all the rubbish going to landfill sites that we use here in UK to bury our rubbish / garbage. you can even use the bottom part of the bottle as a small pot and use the top as a greenhouse with cap removed.
Happy gardening and good luck.
WeeNel.

Love those pics of your sunflowers! They are fast growers....

WeeNel....I agree - reuse/recycle all that you can!

Thank you so much everyone. I would definitely like to keep an update here throughout the summer on the progress of these mammoths. I bit the bullet and decided to move some of them into the ground in the pots yesterday. Best part was we got an awesome rain storm just a few hours after I finished so they all got really good rain which seemed to perk them up quite some bit.

I'm monitoring the area where I planted them and so far so good. Nothing has paid any attention to them. I think they might just actually make it. :)

Worse case scenario if I lose some, I have several more potted ones to replace them, so it's a nice trail and error time.

Just for fun I also started some Lemon Queen Sunflowers and Four O'clocks, the tea time mix today. I was so excited to find the Lemon Queens since no place around here seems to carry those, which is weird, and I hear they are really awesome for attracting bees and butterflies.

Hope no one minds me updating this thread from time to time now. Just being a first timer with planting my own seeds, it's actually pretty exciting with everything going real good and not killing everything lol. I did lose a few seedlings though, but I figured having a 100% success rate wasn't going to be very realistic. Some seedlings just kinda laid over and wilted, but it was only maybe a couple california poppies and some sunflower seeds just never germinated.

Anyway, though I'd like to post a few more pics of my various experiments again since I'm pretty proud of them. Not even sure what I'm gonna do with all these since I just started them all on a whim with no real plan in mind. More just to see if I could do it. probably end up potting a lot of them eventually.

Sticks pretty well indicate what everything is. Got some poppies, two of which just wilted for some reason, some nasturtiums, marigolds, texas bluebonnets, convolvulus, zinnias, and there's some that I can't for the life of me remember what they are. Like a moron, I forgot to label the containers. There's like 10 little containers of them together by the Zinnias and Marigolds.

Thanks again everyone for the encouragement!

Love to hear your updates dlefik, you have found the rite site as we all want to learn, encourage and give pat's on the back from time to time.
Also there are always other new gardeners who may be trying out the same as you and they will also learn how to, when or why.
Thats what gardeners like, passing on any hints and tips and also learning new stuff them selves, by gardening, your learning new stuff all the time.
Good luck, keep us informed.
Kindest Regards.
WeeNel.

Hi everyone. Been a few weeks since I posted anything, but I was pretty eager to share an update on some of my stuff now that some time has passed. I labeled all the pics with the names of the plants so hopefully they should be easy to see.

I was really excited my dutch lillies I planted in pots back in the beginning of may have finally popped open the blooms, and let me tell you, for those who haven't grown these, they smell absolutely awesome! Like nothing I've experienced from smelling a bloom before.

Also, my braided hibiscus tree finally started blooming! I was really worried about it because it looked like a ghost tree in the winter when I had it inside, then I repotted it back in April, gave it some miracle-gro sticks, and now it's booming like crazy. :)

The red pot has my nasturtium seeds I started towards the end of may and it just seems to be growing like crazy.

The pic with my dinnerplate dahlias may look small, but the picture squashed a little because the way I had to rotate the camera. A quick measurement on the height came up to about 3 foot high though. I used to have the dahlias in pots, but decided to transplant them outside and when I did, man that thing shot up in size!

Also, my mammoth and chianti suns have evaded the animals and are doing really good. I think the last time I showed them about three weeks ago they were just a couple inches high in peat pots, and now most are over two foot in height. All in all between the mammoths and chianti suns, there's about 30 of them so I didn't do pics of all of them, just the taller one right now.

I'll post more updates in a few weeks when things really take off. Right now Ohio's been going through nonstop rain for about the last week and a half or so, so a lot of floodin has been going on, but hopefully we start getting drier weather soon and things can start getting more sun.

Looking great, thanks for the update, it's fun for me to see the progress. Make sure you post again when the Dahlia blooms.

Yeah! :)

Thanks! Things are really taking off so hopefully next update will be even better.

@Pistil - I'm eagerly awaiting those Dahlia blooms myself. They're getting real close now so hopefully they'll start popping soon. :)

Seems some of my mammoths got a little stunted where the dirt was flooded during our last few rains, but a lot of the ones that didn't stand in water are really flying in size. I noticed quite a few of the suns were getting some yellow leaves around the bottom of the plant so I'm really hoping if the rain slows down a bit, they'll get back to green and resume growing like the other few.

This message was edited Jun 22, 2015 4:08 PM

4 days later and finally got a bloom on my Dahlias! One yellow and one purple. Looks like the yellow one's got more coming on the way soon hopefully.

Hey folks. For anyone interested where my sunflower worries went, well, here's an update. Finally got my first bloom off my Chianti suns. Some of my mammoths are already pushing 7 foot tall, definitely over my head, and even a few of my chianti suns are pushing 6-7 foot as well, which is pretty good considering the seed pack stated max of 5 foot high if I remember correctly. Still no blooms on my mammoths though, which I guess is a good thing. That means more height growing. :) Here's some pics with my first chianti sunflower bloom and looks like loads more blooms on the way.

So weird considering these guys were all only about 4 inches high when I transplanted them in the ground. They're some seriously fast growers. By the way, these images have no color enhancing. Default cam settings with minor exposure correcting because it's a pretty cloudy day. The colors on these Chianti blooms are definitely eye candy.


This message was edited Jul 16, 2015 3:15 PM

Oh man your photos make me miss Ohio. I grew up there. Fabulous rich colors of those babies.

Thanks Pistil. The way the rain has been hammering us though, you're not missing much right now lol. These suns have been hammered for weeks with seriously heavy rains and flooding of the grounds. Several have been knocked over almost completely flat to the ground numerous times because the ground flooded so bad and loosened around the roots plus high winds on top of that, but standing them up, packing the dirt and tying to the fence with twine, and they keep on kicking like nothing even happened. They are definitely heavy duty punishment taking plants lol.

Honestly I'm so excited thinking how nice these things will look when they all bloom in. Several of these Chiantis have numerous blooms coming in off each plant. Right now the count is 10 Chianti suns and 21 mammoths. I'm just getting a little anxious.

Those are incredible looking plants! Even some of the stems have some tinting. Really nice!
Glad these are growing so well for you, and thanks for sharing.