Summer's End Sunflowers

Sunflowers at Community Garden

Watering the Community Garden Plot

First Beans

They were a bit late but still delicious. I picked the first (12) beans this  morning from my community garden plot. Watered, onions and garlic coming along as are the sunflowers. I get asked why  I grow sunflowers and  I say, one I love how they look, two, the bees love them, and three for the seeds.

Happy gardening.

Sunflower Beginning

The Versatile Sunflower

From children’s forts to cleaning up radioactive waste, sunflowers are a very versatile and beautiful plant.

Floating rafts of sunflowers were used to clean up water contaminated as a result of the 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the former Soviet Union. The roots of the sunflower plants remove 95% of the radioactivity in the water by pulling contaminants out of the water.

There are even giant sunflower competitions just as there are giant pumpkin competitions.

All the gardens that I have created for either myself or others have all had at least one sunflower; this includes balcony gardens. Mind you the ones that I grew on the balcony where a miniature hybrid not the up to twenty foot tall monster that grabs your attention in later summer.

Sunflower (Helianthus annuus ) is an annual herb that can withstand mild frost as a seedling, but requires at least 100 frost free days for normal development. Intolerant of shade, sunflowers can be successfully cultivated in many countries.