Thanks,
Edie

I've planted rows of them before for my birds and when I was thinking about trying to sell some of the flowers. I don't think that I got any seeds out of it though. The goldfinches are *extremely* attracted to real sunflowers. The goldfinches look PARTICULARLY stunning against a backdrop of pale yellow "Valentine" sunflowers. The picture isn't of the Valentine sunflowers, but it's the only one that I managed to take with the goldfinches.

I'd be hornswoggled if they shared diseases!

Great photo, Ralleia.

Yes, the stems ARE very sturdy! I always use a big pair of loppers to cut them down rather than attempt to pull them. The same with the woody stems of okra.

I don't mind that though, since I also grow them to generate organic matter for composting. And I LOVE to see the goldfinches on them.

Thank you for the compliment on my photo! Maybe this year I'll try to get a photo with them on a 'Valentine' sunflower--so pretty.

You can interplant them with lettuce in early spring. The lettuce will thrive in the cool weather, and the sunflowers will provide shade as the weather heats up.

I've had bird feeders, suet feeders, and grown sunflowers for years. Never has a single squirrel here tried to raid a feeder or climb a sunflower.

It's eleven acres here, and I have mature oak, walnut, and other trees, so maybe they have so much natural food that they never even bother?

Also, I read in "Carrots Love Tomatoes" that sunflowers give off a substance around them in the soil that inhibits the growth of other plants near bye, making it somewhat of a 'no grow zone'. Has anyone heard of this?

Flowering mallow is another good bee plant that I grow throughout my vegetable garden. It blossoms freely all season & has beautiful purple flowers, but it is not for everyone... it self-seeds heavily, and may even be perennial in warmer climates.

I've tried some of the red-flowered sunflowers, but they were poor pollen producers, so unsuitable for my purposes. Pretty though. They didn't make much seed either, which might be a good thing for those with squirrel problems. There's enough feral cats around my rural garden that squirrels are not an issue for me. And on that topic...

"Anything that attracts squirrels to the garden is something I don't want in there."

You might want to reconsider attracting goldfinches to the garden as well. When their numbers began increasing in my rural garden, I welcomed their presence as my friends. That is, until they developed a fondness for my Swiss chard, and pecked it into oblivion. They pecked the ends off some of my pea vines as well, and were probably the culprits that were pecking some of my tomatoes. Now I have to use floating row cover over chard & other tender greens to keep the finches out.

We haven't had squirrel problems, either. Probably a combination of plenty of other food sources for them...and the barn kitties. Most of the sunflowers we grow are the 3' tall ones and they're really pretty in the garden. They look great with the cabbage, bush beans, tomatoes, root veggies, etc. and no problems with reseeding :)

Note the bee at the top;)

Self seeding is a problem, but they are easy to pull. The small city birds love the seeds in the fall. The woody stems make excellent plant stakes, cut to size, to hold up the heavy sweet peppers.

Other plants don't really like to grow around the sunflower roots, but the tomatoes don't seem to care. Don't know if the named sunflower varieties would behave differently. I'm glad I discovered this property of our native sunflower 'weed'.