How to Plant Sunflowers : Growing Guide

Planting sunflowers is the most recommended way to have our own sunflower seeds, a great source of B vitamins and antioxidants, which can be used both as a snack and to add to breakfast muesli as well as to make magnificent dishes.

Pipes, that delicious fruit that sunflowers offer us and that we can roast at home to eat easily, are nothing more and nothing less than the seed of future sunflowers. It is a plant that apart from being beautiful and cheerful, it can be great for us to sow it in our garden or urban garden, not only because of its “fruit” but also because it will help us increase the production of the garden. Now we will see why.

The first thing we must do to plant sunflowers in the garden is to choose the variety that we want to plant. There are plenty of varieties, and while some are ornamental like the maximilian sunflower , there are also some giant varieties like the Russian Mammoth.

The good thing is that many varieties of this plant will serve us for the best of the purposes that is to attract pollinators to the garden, in order to increase the production of our fruits such as zucchini, pumpkin or cucumber.

When to sow sunflower

Although sunflowers can be sown in direct sowing in the garden, and in fact sometimes it is the best option, if we want to advance the process a little, we must do it in a seedbed.

The best time to plant sunflowers is mid to late winter. That is, it is there when we will carry out the sowing in the nursery. If we wanted to do it in direct sowing, we should do it late in the spring and the method would be similar, but already in the orchard or urban garden. The good thing is that the sunflower, although it likes heat and good temperatures, can germinate from 12º.

How to plant sunflowers

As for how to prepare the seedbed correctly and how to sow sunflowers, you have all the data in the video, so there would be no problem. But one thing should be noted and that is that when sowing the sunflower we must plan how many plants we can put in our garden.

As surely many of us do not dedicate ourselves to mass-produce to make oil or sell pipes, in a family or home garden, sunflowers are usually used more for their beauty and as we mentioned before to attract pollinators , so we must plant it later in The garden between our crops, alternating and if we want to put them together we will plant them at a distance of 50 cm or 90 cm if we get the giant varieties. So get ready, I hope the video will help you and go ahead with the winter seedbeds.

The process of sowing directly in the garden or planting sunflowers that we have bought in a nursery or that we have germinated in the seedbed is the same, the care and preparation of the land will be indifferent to the option we choose. 

I prefer to prepare a seedbed for several reasons that I leave you in this article , but above all to advance the process of growing sunflower.

When to plant sunflower  

What is the best time to plant sunflowers? Now is the time to plant sunflowers. This will be in mid-spring and if we have not made a seedbed and we want to do direct sowing, we will also do it at the same time, when the cold is not so night and the frosts have disappeared. 

Sunflowers accept direct sowing very well, so if you don't want to make a seedbed there is no reason to worry that the process will work anyway.

Usually  

Among the cares to take into account when planting sunflowers is the soil, which does not need to be specially fertilized. If we have the land well fertilized in autumn we will not have to make large contributions of nutrients. 

Although they do best in loose soils rich in organic matter, they accept almost any type of soil. In addition, they need deep soils because they develop good roots to search for nutrients.

We must plant sunflowers in full sun. It is a crop that needs at least 6 hours of direct light, protected from the wind, since it can break the stem and adapts to different temperatures from 12 to 30ºC.

Watering sunflower 

Sunflower is normally grown rainfed, which indicates that it does not have many water needs. One to two times a week in a moderate way if it does not rain would be more than enough, since also with its deep roots it can look for nutrients and water.

However, if we sow the plants directly, the first weeks we must do more abundant and continuous waterings. Once they grow a little, they no longer need so many waterings.

Protect the crop

If we want to advance the cultivation a bit or simply the temperatures are still unstable and there are risks of frost when planting sunflowers in our garden, we can protect our plants with mini greenhouses made with 5L plastic bottles.

These bottles really do an amazing job and help our plants to develop so much better. I leave you with the video where I explain all this and much more step by step: