Make The Most of Sunflowers

You may think of sunflowers as simple and common, but I want you to take another look at this old fashioned cutting garden work horse. Sunflowers are easy to grow and come in a huge variety of shapes, colors, sizes, and textures that you can work into so many creative designs.

They celebrate the height of summer while also giving just the right vibe to fall arrangements.

I’ve really fallen in love with them and want to share my tips on growing, handling and designing with sunflowers so that you can enjoy them fully too.

Growing

Sunflowers are dead easy to grow. Seed is relatively inexpensive, germination is simple, they can take some cold early in the year, and they go from seed to flower super fast. Even in our short growing season, we start planting sunflowers the first week of April - starting a new flat every two weeks right up to the 4th of July. Planting continuously keeps us in waves of blooms whthout the overwhelm.

Know the 2 kinds of sunflower plants

Sunflowers come in 2 flavors: branching and single stem.

It pays to look at the package to see what kind you’ve got because they’re different to grow and to work with.

As the name implies, Branching Sunflowers are plants with a branching habit - making multiple flower stems on each plant. After you cut a flower, the plant will sometimes make more that you can cut a second time.

To maximize the blooms, we pinch the top of the plant back once it’s about eight inches tall and has developed a few sets of leaves. The plant will send up multiple branches of flowers around the point of the stem that you pinched.

Pinching is an important step for getting the most blooms possible in a small space and the process will produce a bushier, stronger plant that is less prone to toppling over.

Branchers tend to be quite large when fully developed, so they will need some support to keep from falling over. It is recommended to give them a minimum of 12” spacing. ALthough, I’ve sometimes planted them even closer. Since I want flowers for arrangements and bouquets, I don’t want super big blooms and putting the plants closer together keeps the flowers a little smaller. That works for me. You need to decide what works for what you want.

If you look at the center of this branching sunflower plant, you can see where I cut the central stem. You can also see four stems branching out around the base of the cut - giving me four times as many blooming branches than I’d have without pinching.

Single Stem Sunflowers

As their name promises, single stem sunflowers send up just the one straight stem and produce a single bloom. Pinching will ruin them. They will not produce more stems and they won’t bloom at all. Just leave them alone.

Although they make just a single flower, These one hit wonders are totally worth growing and I plant a ton of them every season. They come in some gorgeous varieties that I can’t live without. Plus, they’re designed for cut flower production so their stems are strong without getting too large.

You can grown them super close together to maximize the number of blooms per square foot of growing space. We plant ours on 6” spacing which is twice as close together as the branchers.

Because we’re always starting new seeds as far into the season as possble, we’ve sometimes cut a crop of single stemmers and planted new ones right back in the same bed in the same year.

Procut Gold is one of my favorite single stem varieties

Branching “Teddy Bear” sunflowers in the field

Handling

Harvest at the right time

If you cut the flower just as the first petals are beginning to wink open, it will finish opening in your vase. I love to cut when only the first petal has unfolded both to extend my vase life and to get the flower out of the field before insects, wind or anything else can damage the petals.

This sunflower has opened a little further than I like for harvest because most of the petals have already unfolded. You want to cut it when it is 90 percent closed up like the petals on the bottom of this bloom.

Manage water

Unlike flowers that take up water through the cut end, sunflowers can drink water all along the full length of their stems. That’s why they’ll do better in a deep vase with plenty of water. And, if you need to hydrate blooms before arranging, you can put them in a deep bucket with water all the way up to their necks - giving them a good drink before you get to work on them.

Design tips

Use an odd number of stems

Odd numbers are an old designer’s trick with any flower because it creates a slight asymmetry that is pleasing to look at and appears more natural. But, the odd numbers are extra important with sunflowers. Because they are the largest element in the vase and because they are round, even numbers can end up looking like headlights. You really don’t want that.

Note the three sunflowers that form a triangle shape. The odd number creates a sense of movement and naturalness that is dulled with an even number of blooms.

Use blooms in any stage

While sunflowers scream summer, their warm colors while fresh and textures after the bloom make them a foundation for fall designs. I love to leave a few in the field to harvest just after they’ve finished blooming but before they get too dried out and attacked by birds. These late season spent blooms add so much to my work in the fall, They are gorgeous in wreaths with everlastings, and I love to mix them with fresh flowers to add texture for the best fall arrangements.

It’s never too late to make something beautiful with sunflowers.

Sunflower heads with amaranthus, chocolate cosmos and fresh basil gone to seed. This favorite fall bouquet was intended to be enjoyed like fresh flowers in a vase, then hung to dry so it could last a little longer