Two days ago I talked about cucumber varieties, and yesterday I talked about melons. TODAY .... sunflowers. We plant them as a part of companion group: sunflowers, melons, and cucumbers. What I call the "Three Cousins": the sunflowers grow up tall and strong, with large stalks, sending down long roots that bring up nutrients and moisture. The cucumbers climb up the sunflower stalks. And the melons provide a living "mulch" to keep in moisture.
Here are the varieties of sunflowers we grew this year:
- Skyscraper
- Black Russian
- Mammoth
- Mammoth Russian
- Arikara
Rather, TRIED to grow. Really bad soil that's actually just a lot of sand. Anyway, I ended up mixing seeds so I don't know which actually grew and which didn't. But again, my goal is to plant only ONE kind. Here's what we want out of a sunflower:
- short growing season (90 days, but less is preferred)
- easy to grow
- very tall
- hardy
- strong enough for beans or cucumbers to use as a trellis
- lots of seeds on the seedhead
- seeds are nutritious (good for us AND to keep for our critters over winter)
- heirloom (non-gmo, and so we can save seeds to grow)
Suggestions?
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