Re: Sunflower "Russian Giant"
- To:
- Subject: Re: Sunflower "Russian Giant"
- From: R* C*
- Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 14:48:34 -0500
Although this is not a perennial.....
It's pretty hard to tell a sunflower variety by the seeds, but if they look
like the ones you buy for eating, or feeding birds, they likely are Russian
Mammoth or something similar.
They may well get to be some 14 ft tall if they are. There are lots better
choices for the garden than Russian Mammoth, though. The Russian Mammoths,
in my experience have one or sometimes two flower heads and then they are
done. The smaller sunflowers, which also usually have smaller seeds are
often multiflowering. I bought a pack of seeds from Mr. Fothergill's ( a UK
company we get a lot of seeds from here in Canada), and unfortunately have
forgotten the variety name, but they came in a mix of red, orange and yellow
flowers. They were much smaller than the Russian Mammoth, both in height
and flower size. Flowers were only the size of a sandwich plate, but they
bloomed from the end of July through mid to late September, and there were
usually three or four flowers in bloom per plant. The pack said they would
only get four feet tall, but here in our warmer climate they must have found
things more to their liking than in England, because they were about eight
feet tall. I will definitely do them again if I can find more seeds-the
birds got all mine.
Bob Campbell
USDA 4
Southern Ontario
.
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