Seedy Saturday

Rust colored sunflower

Welcome to Seedy Saturday! This weeks FREE seed giveaway is for some small seeded decorative sunflowers.

In 2009 I planted several packets of mixed colors of decorative sunflowers and they were in all shades of red, rust, orange and yellow. The plants were quite variable also, some just 3 feet tall, up to about 6 feet. Some plants had just one or two larger flowerheads while others branched out a lot and had a dozen smaller ones.

The bed they were growing in was not in the best shape, so they would probably have been bigger and had more flowers in better soil. The flowers attracted a lot of bees and butterflies and the seeds attracted a lot of finches and other small seed eating birds. My idea for growing them was as chicken feed, but the dogs got the chickens before I tried them out to see if the chickens liked them.

Since sunflowers are very much outbreeders there is no telling what you will get when you plant these, they will be a big surprise. I hope that the winner will send me pictures of them when they bloom!

To be in the drawing for these free seeds, simply comment on this post! For the fine print rules, read this post.

In other news the weather has been warm, sunny and dry and I'm having to water the outdoor gardens a bit. And the rats that have taken up residence under the house, in the walls and attic are stirring. One nibbled some pea shoots in the greenhouse. However, I set a trap and got that one. Getting ready to reset the trap as I know there are a lot more of them. Thinking maybe I need to buy some more traps. One might not be enough.

I got a windfall of two boxes of aging produce out of which I canned 21 pints of applesauce and some half pints of salsa. Just lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. I'll be doing a how-to article for making the applesauce.