4 Reasons to Plant Sunflowers

Sunflowers for fall? I'm not sure if this is going to work. I mean, of course, there's the whole color palette. Sunflower yellow is really more of a summer color, more suited to gingham and strawberry cotton prints, whereas it's really becoming more of a leggings and Pumpkin Spice Latte moment right now. But in Southern California at least, where winters don't often dip below 50 degrees F (the bottoming out temp for frost tender sunflowers), I have a theory that sunflowers might be a fall option, and I'm planting some now to see if they survive. I've fallen in love with this hardworking flower this spring and summer, so I'll definitely be starting some seedlings in February indoors so they can go out into the garden as early as March, but if I can have a year round dose of these amazing multi-taskers, I'll take it. Here's why sunflowers are my new obsession.

1. Bird Seed. Now I personally like to have birds come swooping into my garden because I like to pretend they are drawn there by my beautiful singing voice and my inherent and visible kindness as a clearly misplaced Disney princess who's been cruelly relocated to the real world. You may enjoy them for the pastoral scene they set when you go out in the morning for your coffee moment and hear them chirping away, or you may just enjoy the sight of brightly colored songbirds with their impossibly brilliant plumage.

This guy, a California oriole, showed up on my fence this year.

For the urban farmer, though, the birds are essential, both as pollinators (especially for large flowers like sunflowers) and for the bugs they eat. Yes, birds can be a nuisance when it comes to tasty little sprouts and berry bushes, but it's worth the hassle of covering certain plants in bird netting to have them present in the garden to eat things like tomato hornworms and cabbage loopers and the general abundance of caterpillars that turn into moths and other pests. Though I don't allow birds to just free range my entire sunflower garden, I do leave one or two sunflowers to go to seed where the birds can easily access them, and I also scatter a handful of seeds on the ground. Particularly in winter food sources can be scarce for birds and protein-rich sunflower seeds and the perfect little pick me up to keep them pecking around in the garden long enough to earn their keep by gobbling up some pests. 

2. Bees. Scientists haven't come up with a definitive answer yet on what is causing the catastrophic Colony Collapse Disorder that has devastated American beehives since 1997. Over ten million beehives have been lost due to CCD, worker bees disappearing from the hive despite an abundance of food and leaving the queen with just a few nurse bees to care for the young. The effects are potentially devastating to us humans as well since most food crops need to be pollinated in some way before they can fruit. It's serious enough that the federal government has enacted a White House Task Force on Pollinator Health to reduce the amount of beehives being lost to CCD and restore and enhance millions of acres of land for pollinators like the honey bee and monarch butterfly. The President has asked all citizens to help by planting pollinator gardens or setting aside land to go wild. Organizations like The Great Sunflower Project are trying to help educate and promote the use of sunflowers for pollinator gardens since sunflowers, by virtue of their bright yellow color, are especially attractive to bees and particularly rich in abundant pollen. Additionally, by letting some of the stems remain standing after the flowers are spent, you can provide hollow tubes for wild bees to lay their eggs. 

Sunflower "Lemon Queen"--particularly attractive to bees (notice pollen all over the leaves) and recommended by the Great Sunflower Project

Any sunflower seed will do as long you check to see that it is not a pollen free varietal (developed for florist arrangements) but The Great Sunflower Project particularly promotes the "Lemon Queen", a relatively small 4"-5" head, 5'-6' feet in height, with more than average pollen production. You can find the seeds right at the checkout counter at Whole Foods or in most nursery seed racks, or find them at Burpee Seeds or my personal favorite, Renee's Garden Seeds.

3. Attracting pollinators. The flowers are gorgeous, of course, and so cheerful, but the petals aren't just decorative and nor is the yellow color coincidental. Not only are sunflowers benefiting the pollinators themselves but the fact that they draw these beneficial insects and birds to the garden helps the entire garden ecosystem. Bees that come for the sunflower pollen will also pause to pollinate your squash blossoms and blueberry flowers. The huge yellow sunflower heads are like a big neon truck-stop beacon shouting "Food, Next Exit!" Not only do bees love the bright yellow color but all kinds of butterflies, including the struggling populations of migratory Monarchs, are attracted as well. I wish I'd put some sunflowers in next to my Butternut squashes this spring; the gourds flowered with some brilliant yellow blossoms but never fruited from lack of pollinating. Blah.

4. The Seeds!

A handful of sunflower seeds thrown into the ground under 1/2" of cover soil yielded about six heads and this bowl of seeds, enough that I have plenty for replanting even after I scattered some to the wild birds, fed handfuls to my chickens, and roasted a batch with salt. Click here for the recipe. Sunflower seeds are delicious but more than that, they just might be the perfect snack for keeping yourself beautiful. Don't believe me? A comparison of sunflower kernels to some other beauty-magazine-lauded nuts and berries (here) lists sunflower seeds as extraordinarily rich in selenium, iron, zinc (all of which combat thyroid problems that lead to lowered metabolisms and hair loss) and vitamin E (keeps your skin healthy and plumped). Did I already mention delicious? They're delicious.

Sunflowers take almost no care except a sunny spot and a bit of water to thrive (nothing like what your lawn full of emotionally manipulative grass, with its empty promises of softly caressing green abundance but in actuality scratchy, itchy blades of lies that would only save you from starvation if they could also give you crippling belly cramps and would just as soon burn your house to the ground as look at you). Each seed that flowers yields hundreds. HUNDREDS. Of seeds. I am kicking myself for not throwing down pounds of the stuff during prime time sunflower planting season in March. Once my sunflowers' petals had started fading and the seeds had formed, I went ahead and snipped off the top 12" of stem and flower head, bagging the heads in brown paper lunch bags and hanging them upside down. They dried in about six weeks and the seeds were easy to just brush off with a fingertip. 

Hopefully my fall sunflower experiment will yield some blossoms for me; but if not, I can't think of a better plant for an early spring container garden and some experiments in succession planting, where you plant a crop of the same seeds every two weeks to end up with flowers throughout the spring and summer. A flower that feeds everything in the garden, as statuesque and slender as a Roman goddess, turning her face to the sun to follow the passage of Helios' flaming chariot across the sky, definitely deserves to be the focus of Farming in Heels.