My sunflower carked it
Today I found to utter dismay that one of my sunflowers had snapped at the base!! Been growing them for 4 months, I thought they were strong enough, what haappenned>!! It was already about 5 feet and had a bud. I wanted to try fixing it with selotape but had no one to help me and only have two hands. I asked my dad, he refused to help me saying it would never work!!! I wanted to try...
I do not what happened. It's been windy here but not that bad. It was a very clean cut right at the soil surface. Could it have been a slug?
I canno check them every minute of the day!! Here are the others, I grew quite a few but now worried the same thing will happen:
Okay so I know the rockery was not the best place for them, too exposed I know, but this area also gets the whole day sun. And to be honest I thought they were strong enough!! I have some along the fence - these are also very wobbly but also thinner. I have staked all with bamboo sticks which don't seem enough now. Some of the roots are coming up off the ground. Any advice to save the others? I found one thick plank of wood which I put on one but no more. Stones around base? More wooden planks?
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OMG Hazel that's amazing. I will havw to go and get some fatter stronger stakes for the ones on the rockery as there is no fence or anything nearby. the shed is too far away. The ones along the fence, yes I can tie those to the fence. Bamboo canes aren't strong enough...I don't know what I'm going to use.
Thanks Pansyface for the sympathy. It was very stupid of me to plant them on the rockery where it's totally exposed.
I think the problem was just the wind, too - in fact, I had a five foot one break a few years ago in the wind, even though it was in a sheltered spot and supported. They can be rescued if you're lucky - there needs to be at least a quarter of the stem still connected, and you need to be very quick - but there were almost more sticks than sunflower by the time I'd finished.
Last edited: 14 July 2016 21:10:32
I've grown sunflowers for the past 6 years. I love them and feel the garden is not complete without them. I've grown some giants of 4 metres but on average they range between 2.5 - 3 metres.
Like some other contributors to the thread, I find that sturdy bamboo canes are adequate except for the very strongest winds. I buy mine from Wilko. They do a small range from short ones to very tall ones, in bundles of 10, although they do tend to sell out quite quickly and I sometimes you have to wait for them to come back into stock.
As my sunflowers grow I increase the height and the amount of canes I use. As they get quite tall I use several canes, twine, and the flexible rubberised wire plant ties to secure them. The ties are for the plant stems and I secure the plants at several points, threading and connecting the twine around several canes to form a network of connections that means the plants are tied to more than one cane. This means that the canes are also tied to each other, and sometimes to nearby fencing or other structures as well. When securing the ties I make sure that the plant has plenty of growing room and they're not too tight around the stem.
I also make sure that the tallest (and thickest) canes are secure by hammering them in with a rubber mallet. Take care if you do this, make sure the ground is very wet and hold the cane near the top when hammering it so that it doesn't flex as you hit it.
I prefer the bamboo to rigid poles because it allows for the movement of the plant in high winds and the plant needs to have some movement to help develop strong roots. More importantly when you have a rigid pole there is a strong chance of the upper parts of the plant snapping off. Like other advice here, I also use nearby structures such as fences and trellises to help secure them.
Even with this all in place the strongest winds will always cause damage, particularly multi-headed plants that are heavy with large flowers. I've seen large branches snap off. Generally though the method I've described is secure even in quite strong winds but as I said, in the strongest winds you can only cross your fingers and hope for the best.
As an example, here are some before and after pictures of my sunflowers.They were taken about a week before the storm of October 2013, and the day after it. Although the canes didn't break and weren't uprooted some were completely bent over, some at almost 90 degrees.
Finally Wakeshine, as Hazel suggested, wind damaged plants can often be saved if there's some of the main stem still intact. I had one that had been bent over a fence in the wind and the stem was completely flattened at the bend. After straightening it a little and giving it some more support it lasted the remainder of the growing season.
Last edited: 16 July 2016 12:38:28
Soulboy, thank you so much for this detailed response and excellent advice. Your photos are absolutely amazing - what an enchanting sunflower garden. Looks so magical. Well even your sunflower did not survive the storm - so very sorry. As you can see I have not staked mine properly. I am wondering if the Wilko bamboo sticks are strong enough. I thought I'd got some pretty strong ones but the sunflower stems are way fatter so the sticks I have make no difference.
Today am going in search of some strong wooden poles to use to re-tie them all. It's going to be a lot of work. Today I found another one had snapped (see my other post) and I have fixed it with sellotape and put some extra poles around. Let's see if it will survive. Once again thanks for sharing your experience and amazing photos...
It's slugs, they attacked mine with vigour and made them look like they had snapped at the base. I put a ton of slug pellets around the base of my one remaining sunflower and it's grown very big with hardly any support. Slugs and snails love them.
Hi Wakeshine, the bamboo canes, whether from Wilko, or elsewhere are perfectly adequate for all but the extreme giant sunflowers. You can buy different lengths and thicknesses, and as I mentioned they have the advantage of flexibility.
The key though is to have the plants attached to more than one cane and the canes attached to each other for the best results. This only really applies though if you have very tall and thick stemmed sunflowers. Anything under about 5' should be ok with a single cane, albeit a reasonable thick one, one that is at least as tall as the plant, with the plant secured to the cane at different heights.
Thanks for the compliments, apart from that storm 2013 was the best year for flowering plants I've had so far. And, I'm very glad to be able to help in any way. That's what the forum's for and I've received my fair share of help from members.
Last edited: 18 July 2016 13:23:43
Thanks :-) Well I've grown 3 varieties - sunshine giant, American giant, and Unwins Orange and Lemons. I don't know where I put what but I think the really unstable ones must be the giant varieties. As a beginner I should have just begun with shorter varieties but I didn't realise at the time that there were so many different varieties, and I just picked up what are packets I found in the supermarket. Next time!