A sunflower’s brilliant blooms are the quintessential symbol of summer. Despite its reputation as a nuisance in the farmyard, many people take great pride in having these towering trees as part of their outdoor decor. Bright and cheery flowers brighten a garden and may be eaten by both humans and animals. Sunflowers were formerly a staple crop for many communities, but now they are cultivated mostly for their aesthetic and economic worth. Sunflowers are cultivated for their edible blooms, seeds, and oil, as well as for use in human and animal nutrition. You may also find sunflowers in many florist Kuala Lumpur bouquets and other fresh flower arrangements.
Step-by-step instructions for cultivating beautiful sunflowers
Hundreds of small blossoms, or florets, come together to form massive, golden flowers. The golden ‘petals’ around the head are specialized leaves meant to shield the delicate inner florets from predators and adverse conditions. Cream, orange, crimson, maroon, peachy pink, and bicolor sunflowers are some of the more recent hue additions to garden stores and seed catalogs. Sunflowers do follow the sun’s path across the sky, thus its common name, although this behavior is restricted to young plants. Although developing flower buds may track the sun’s motion across the sky, once the stem hardens, the blooms always point due east.
- Plant in broad sun and any non-absorbent soil for optimal growth of this hardy annual.
- Planting: Just scatter some seeds in the ground in the spring, and you’ll have a beautiful garden in no time.
- Sunflowers, depending on the variety, may grow to be anywhere from 1 to 8 feet tall during the warm growing season.
- Most types of sunflowers may be harvested between 70 and 100 days after sowing. When the seed heads become droopy yellow-brown on the back, it’s time to harvest them so that animals don’t snack on them. Drying it out will take a few weeks if you put it somewhere warm and dry. Have fun eating them raw, roasting them, feeding them to the birds, or storing some to grow next year.
- Penang florist Georgetown Sunflowers have the remarkable ability to stunt the development of neighboring plants, a phenomenon known as allelopathy. This location may be unsuitable for lawn and other tree growth due to the toxicity of sunflower hulls. Remove hulls from around bird feeders and dead sunflower plants to prevent grass from dying in spots.
Sunflowers are favored by a wide variety of animals and pollinators.
Many species of insects, such as bees, wasps, and butterflies, come to pollinate flowers while they are in full bloom. More and more Malaysian creatures come to feast on drying seed heads. Beautiful birds of all kinds flock to seed heads after they have dried up for a tasty meal, and it’s hilarious to watch squirrels try to pull the stems down to their level so they can eat them. These tasty flowers are sure to attract a wide variety of mammals, including hares, mice, chipmunks, squirrels, and voles.