I Grew These Sunflowers

My plot at Northey Street filled with 120 sunflowers I grew from seed.

In most places in the world, winter time means freezing temperatures, animals hibernating and essentially, a gardening dead zone.

But not in Brisbane. Winter is almost the perfect time to grow things including tomatoes, broccoli and carrots and this year I wanted to add in some flowers in the mix just for myself, so I decided on the flower that thrives in all seasons: sunflowers. What could go wrong? Absolutely nothing! They were super easy to grow and super beautiful. Here is a little run down on what I did.

Plot it out

I have a large backyard at home where I planned to grow sunflowers, but I wanted to challenge myself a little so I also decided to plant sunflowers in my bigger Northey Street plot. I measured the space and because sunflowers need to be planted about 10cm apart, I worked out there was space for 120 flowers. Which means I had to plant 120 seeds. Luckily I own a seed company! Though to be real, 120 seeds in not that much - it was less than 10 packets of seeds and less than a $50 spend to get a huge plot of sunflowers planted and over 10 bunches of blooms. Well worth the investment.

You got to keep ‘em separated

I didn’t want all my flowers to bloom at once, but rather I was looking for to pick bunches of flowers each week, so I decided to stagger my planting. I planted 30 seeds per month, for 4 months. I used a standard seed tray you can get at Bunnings or a hardware store that has 30 spaces in it. This method worked super well and all of the seeds sprouted into tiny seedlings ready to plant. The one downside of the “staggering” method was that as the first seedlings grew into flowers, my plot looked a bit weird. It had sunflowers at all different heights in it, from the 2 metre tall flowers in bloom at the same time as ankle height sunflower seedlings that were planted last. Oh well!

Sunflowers for the win

Overall the flowers were so stunning, I had homegrown beauties to enjoy for weeks on end and the bees loved them too. In my plot I cut half of the flowers for myself and to gift others and left half the flowers there to let the bees feast on. Win-win! If you are thinking about growing sunflowers for yourself, absolutely go for it! They are one of the easiest flowers to grow from seed and will reward you every time. You can check out Salisbury Grange Sunflower seeds here.

Sunflowers in my backyard