Sunflower Report 2.0

There are a dozen monsters lurking in the back yard — but first, the corner monsterarium.

Here are how things stand as of today, after the varmint wars, the slug wars, the vampire rabbit invasion, and squirrel antics. Some seedlings re-planted, various methods employed to re-plant, a couple different sprays. Haven’t even taken any measurements yet. But after starting to water more regularly, and after the sun made itself know more, things are ok — the plants seem to have reached their “growth stride”. So in the corner garden we have about six of them.

And this is one of the experimental “pot” sunflowers - pretty decent sized pot — this originally was a last ditch effort for the rabbit wars, planting it in a pot so as to mitigate rabbit predations. It seems to be doing okie dokie.

Then we have a few experimental sunflowers growing in even smaller pots — this is actually the sunflower hospital — the one on the left (remember you can click on the pictures to get larger verswions) has a kind of crook in it — I thought it was a goner — it had been bendy/spindly when it was younger, and i sort of tried to bend it back into shape - and broke the stalk — not completely, but mostly. But I tried actually taping the stalk, and it seems to have repaired itself.

The one to the right of the rabbit is also doing surprisingly well - relocating them to places with sun seemed to work well.

The stone rabbit does not seem to have done a very good job of serving as a warning to the vampire rabbits in the Rabbit Wars.

And here we come to the dozen monsters - an experiment to see if sunflowers could make a screen for the neighbor’s fence, and maybe muffle some of the yappy dognatiousness.

The dozen monster experiment also fell prey to vampire rabbit invasions, slug horror, other unmentionable traumatics — but the backup seeds were planted, and when I discovered how easy it was to put some cheap rabbit fence in, friend Scott helped to put in some fence, and it feels great knowing the whiskery vampires can no longer destroy the sunflower monsters in their vulnerable stage.

The varmint chaos got pretty brutal in the front circular experiment — first planting way back in may got munched up something fierce — then a second planting got munched as well. As of the second munching I started growing backup seedlings, and then a kind and helpful visiting parent (see http://sunflowereport.blogspot.com for pictures of the parents helping with seed harvest) suggested rabbit fence — smaller at the bottom, more open at the top. It turned out pretty easy to put in — pretty cheap — and no munchings since then.

Here I am, to show a sense of scale.

You would understandably think I am standing next to a telephone pole, or electricity pole, or something — but in fact, the tall stalk next to me is a sequoia sunflower, that grew 200 feet in the first week, thanks to some magic fertilizer I found out in the garage.

But at any rate, the idea is to maybe put some kind of modest yet silly measurement stick on the pole, I mean sequoia sunflower — so you can look at the junior sunflowers growing and see how tall they get.

Recently made some progress. Since the time the seeds were planted, there have been varmints going after the sunflowers, so I started planting more seedlings, then more varmints, then more seedlings.

So it’s been a battle against vampire rabbits, the black squirrel of death from the front yard, and maybe even racoons, and more.

But I decided not to give up, and instead just planted some seedlings later, tried spraying a few different things, and in the case of a new experiment in the front yard, had some help from parental units in constructing a fence to protect things (after a pernicious varmint had the cheek to completely destroy the wonderfully large, well relatively tall sunflower growing there.)

Here is the little round stone enclosure where I had a nice 18 inch sunflower growing that got snagged, then father parental unit employed his upstate ny varmint protection ability to construct a circular wire “fence” with “bunny fence” from home depot — smaller at the bottom, bigger holes at the top, not too entirely bad looking. So hopefully this will prevent the varmints from attacking, and eventually passers by will be able to enjoy a nice sunflower, and maybe the sunflowers will reach down and smack the naughty yappy dogs in the hindquarters and get some discipline going in this neighborhood.

Here we see the main area of last years’ garden. More modest this year, with some 18″ inch or so seedlings, then some newer ones to replace those taken out by vampire rabbits.

Wait a second — who is that peeking out of the crawlspace?

And here is the view of the eldest sunflowers, maybe 2 feet tall, doing fairly well — these might have a chance of reaching six feet by the end of the growing season.

Here are some of the experimental sunflowers, growing in pots — on the left, doing pretty well — the others not so well, but may put them in the ground anyway.

Here we see a pot-based sunflower doing fairly well, and the back-up vampire rabbit scarecrow.

Here’s a nice hosta near the back of the yard, vying for attention. Kind of amazing to see how fast hosta grows.

This year I branched out a bit. Last year I got lucky, the season had more sun, less varmints. But this year, I decided to dig a trench, work the soil, and try planting some sunflowers here — they’ve been attacked by all manner of beasties — but there are some shorter ones that are replacements, just planted today. Am tempted to try some fencing, may do so at the first sign of predatory behavior on the part of bugs and beasties.