Growing sunflowers from seed

In addition to cosmos, we sowed some sunflower seeds at the same time (around Christmas 2015).

The seeds sprouted in a few days. It was a mixed pack so we guessed what variety based on size and colour of the seeds.

About 1.5 months in, I was a bit impatient so I picked up a blooming sunflower pot from Bunnings for a few dollars. That is the one on the right - although they have multiple heads (not visible here), the others never really developed. The pot on the left is one of our own sunflower plants, still a bit weedy but growing tall quickly.

After 2 months, growing very tall and strong with buds forming at the top of each plant. The leaves grow in a very symmetrical pattern.

The first one to bloom was this one. A medium sized bloom maybe 8-10cms across. Just a single bloom on a plant.

This variety took a bit longer but was overall a larger and stronger plant - maybe about 1.3 metres in height, with larger blooms.

In addition, this was a plant with multiple heads at different levels that all developed without a problem. We really liked this one and saved some seeds from it for next growing season. They definitely add bright splashes of colour to the garden.

Here are some other weedy little sunflowers that determinedly produced blooms even though the plant itself seemed very frail. Look at the tiny one right at the bottom..

Another thing we noticed was that the sunflowers seem to attract a lot of ladybirds. Although it may be all the aphids that were attracted to the cosmos, however we noticed only aphids on the cosmos and only ladybirds on the sunflowers.