Cinderella sunflowers

For a few weeks now I have some lovely small sunflowers (Helianthus) growing on the allotment. You may have seen them appearing in a few bunches already, but I thought this week they should get the attention they deserve. I love sunflowers, but every year I manage to neglect them: half eaten by slugs, planted out way too late and not tied in properly.  A bit like Cinderella: neglected and forgotten until she becomes the star of the party. 



As for growing sunflowers,  you can sow in pots, ignore any advice that says you can't. 
The trick is to pinch it out quite early on.  In this way you'll get bushier plants that produce lots of little sunflowers. Don't worry if pinching out means taking off half of the plant. Sunflowers grow quite a bit of stem between sets of leaves and you need to take it back to the first or second set. Of course if you want to grow a tall one with one big flower, don't pinch it out! Sunflowers shed their pollen, if you haven't grown a pollen free variety. So be aware where you place your vase.




















Having left the sunflowers for so long, many were already past their best and I only found three today that I felt were good enough in my bunch of flowers. I am afraid that I can't tell you which variety it is as the label seems to have mysteriously disappeared. 

I combined it with some dahlia's, white nicotiana and cosmos. Cosmos is quickly becoming one of my favourite cutflowers. I've been picking from two white Cosmos bipinnatus "Purity" plants for a few weeks now. The good thing about cosmos is that also the buds will open in a vase, as opposed to dahlia's whose buds will never open in a vase. Cosmos' vase life is thus quite long, especially if you take out the faded flowers every few days.