At long last Sun has arrived!

A sunflower from last year's garden (2010).

 After a very dissapointing week and a half, the sun has finally come out again!  I had been planning on planting my sunflower seeds on May 31, 2011, but that did not happen on account of it being 55 degrees and raining.  Fortunately, the sun came out today and I accomplished some planting.

The seeds I'm planting this year (2011).  Mammoth Grey Stripe and Red Sun, both Ed Hume Seeds.

 I chose to plant two varieties: Mammoth Grey Stripe, which is the classic 10 foot tall sunflower with the huge yellow head, and Red Sun, which is a smaller variety that comes in shades of orange to dark red. 

Note the difference in seed size.  The larger seed are the Mammoth Grey Stripe while the smaller are the Red Sun variety.

 I dug up the soil along the back of my vegetable garden bed next to the rail road ties and removed any weeds that had sprouted since the last weeding.

I planted the seed in the row with one Grey Stripe seed to every five Red Sun seed since there were less of the Grey Stripe seeds and they will grow larger and taller anyway.  I lightly covered the seed with a quarter inch of soil, watered the row with my watering can, and then applied a layer of Corry's Slug and Snail Death to keep the sunflower seedlings protected when they begin to emerge.  Sunflowers seedlings are slug magnets and I have lost many seedlings to slugs over the years because I didn't protect them soon enough.  Slugs will even take down a four inch sunflower plant if given the chance.  So, if the weather prediction is correct, I should see germination in the next week! 

Next post:  Planting the tomato plants in the garden.

For more information on growing sunflowers go to:  Growing Sunflowers