My Sunflower!

I've started gardening again. Last year, it was with basil. This year, I tried planting sunflowers. You can get sunflower seeds from a poultry feeds store at P35-50/kilo. Mine, I got the seeds from the hamster food I bought at Cartimar a few months ago.


Since I'm not sure if the seeds from the hamster food were viable for planting, I just planted five seeds in a tiny pot, just to see if they would grow. And they did! Within a week, I saw tiny green sprouts from the soil. I was excited!

I let them grow some more before deciding to transplant them into the ground. That was a mistake. The pot was in the kitchen sill and the sunflowers grew long stems to get sunlight before growing more leaves. 

The plants had 5-6 inches of the stem so when they grew additional leaves, the stem was wobbly and couldn't support the weight. I lost two plants because of that. Now I know better. I have to plant the sunflower seed directly into the ground or pot so when it sprouts, it could carry the weight of its leaves and flower.

five sunflower plants

Once transplanted in black plastic bags, I watered the plants early in the evening to make sure that the plant and the soil has cooled down after the blazing summer sun. 

After two months, my first sunflower has bloomed and the others were starting to bud. Turns out, I planted a dwarf variety of sunflower.