The Value of Growing Sunflowers, and a Sadness of Slugs

This July has had a lot of rain, so I am fighting with slugs that intend to eat all my sunflowers, plus my sunflowers are behind because they haven't had as much sun as last year. (the garden is pesticide free, and I don't actually like to kill slugs because everything has its place, but the damage is becoming spectacular)

I am a big fan of sunflowers.  They look great.  Bees like them.  Birds eat the seeds.  Just make sure you are growing the ones that have pollen so you get seeds. 

I experimented a bit recently with using coffee grounds from a coffee machine as a slug deterrent.  Slugs don't like it because of the caffeine, but it doesn't necessarily keep them off.  They don't look well when they touch the stuff though.  I tried tea leaves, but they don't work as well.  What does work is to put jars over the seedlings at night.

Last year the sunflowers did very well but then the plant stems froze and fell over in the fall.  I cut the flowers off with a length of stem attached, hung them up to dry indoors, and then attached them firmly to a hedge with string so birds could eat the seeds.  Chickadees picked all the seeds out and then they were just empty like this.

These were mostly black oil seed sunflowers and Lemon Queens which have brown centers.

Last year I had a huge Russian Mammoth sunflower that was just about to bloom, after growing about 10 feet tall,  and a squirrel running along the roof stole the bud and ate it.  Argh!  You can't trust squirrels. I loved the Mammoth sunflowers but they do seem to need a long growing season to actually flower.