Ah! sunflower

August is for sunflowers! I love all the tiny little flowers gathered together into one great big sunny ring of yellow.



(Wikipedia says there are 1,000-2,000 little flowers per head and that H. Vogel proposed in 1979 that the polar coordinates of their arrangement is modeled by r = c \sqrt{n}, \theta = n \times 137.5^{\circ}.)



Our community gardens are full of many 15 foot tall sunflowers this year. They stand above the fence tops. The sparrows, goldfinches and chickadees are singing as they flit among them.

Ah! sunflower, weary of time,

Who countest the steps of the sun,

Seeking after that sweet golden clime

Where the traveller’s journey is done;



William Blake P. 1793

sunflowers under bulletin board

I found some nice Teddy bear sunflowers in a garden store last weekend and bought plants to go under our community garden bulletin board. I had these in my plot last year. They stay short but fill out and keep blooming.

sunflowers!

Its sunflower time! One of my favorite things to do is photographing sunflowers. Usually there's a bee or several bees on it. Today there were also bright yellow gold finches.

I planted my sunflowers late (actually the first planting was eaten by chipmunks and it took me some time to replant in pots and transplant to my plot). The flowers above are all growing in other garden plots - not mine. I have just one in bloom now (below, a Teddy Bear Dwarf Yellow from Botanical Interests),and three or four more varieties budded up and coming soon.

today's sowing list: sunflowers and soybeans

Normally I would direct seed sunflowers and soybeans, but because of my voracious chipmunk, I am sowing them at home in trays and will transplant.

Sunflowers:
Tahumara white (Sand Hill)
Ling's Grey Stripe (Johnny's)
Elf's blend (Botanical Interests)

Soybeans:
Butterbeans (Johnny's)
Envy (Johnny's)

My soybeans that I planted 2 weeks ago had a germination rate of about 3/30 - bad. Today I remembered that I specifically bought the soybean inoculant and I forgot to use it. Today I added it to the soil as I sowed. I also went ahead and planted 3-4 seeds per cell. I hope to get a good crop.

I mostly eat soybeans as edamame (as an appetizer with salt and directly from the pod). I find that home grown are so much better than store bought - even if they're frozen. The best varieties of soybeans are developed by commercial growers to ripen all at once. So sometime in mid August, I look forward to a week of lots of fresh-from-the-garden edamame, then for a month or so, I have fresh frozen. Then ... its back to the store again ...

The sunflowers are an experiment. Sunflowers don't transplant well. I've killed them several times trying to move volunteers. But I've also bought potted plants and they transplanted fine. I wanted to use peat pots, but didn't have any left. So I used regular plastic seed cells. I'll be try to be careful to not disturb the roots when transplanting.