Autumn Sunshine

It has been a week of rather blah weather outside with the cool temperatures, rain and overcast skies. Today is no exception, but despite the less than ideal weather the Sunflowers outside the cafés west facing windows have all started to bloom in earnest. I will be honest I was getting a bit nervous that we might not get the chance to see any blooms on these before a cold frost took them out for the season. We planted these along the west facing windows so they really only get sun in the afternoon which pushed their bloom time back by over a month. Had we planted these along a south facing wall or flower bed these would have been blooming late August through September instead of Early October. We have been fortunate with the relatively warm extended fall weather, which is expected to be in or near the 20 C + range with lots of sun next week so it is looking good that we will get to see all of these bloom before the Autumn Season is well and truly over. All of these are curtesy of West Coast Seeds. We will have seeds for these and others available again starting in late winter for next spring. The taller varieties have produced flowers on stems 4-7 feet tall. In a south facing location with better and deeper soil they would likely surpass this height. These guys were literally planted in a 1 foot wide 4″ deep bed of black earth on top of our local rock hard clay and have received weekly watering only in July during the hottest, driest weather. The smaller Teddy Bear Sunflower is less than 2 feet tall and would make an excellent container grown sunflower. The seeds were all mixed together when planted so I will be honest guessing at the names of the individual flowers based on their colouration, looks like we had a very high germination rate as well as there are ALOT of flowers.