Alright, so Phase 1 of growing sunflowers did not go that well. I did manage to grow the Ballad sunflower successfully – as well as a few stunted others – but I decided to start all over again.

A new lot of Sunspot sunflowers was recently planted out, but in a freakily heavy rainstorm, two of them were battered so badly that their stems broke! Plus, a couple more seemed to just stop growing. I hope the fatality rate won’t continue, or I’ll end up with no flowers…

These other sunflower plants are still in the growing stage, and appear to be holding up so far:

Skyscraper sunflower plant - 2 months old, just over 1m tall

Early Russian plant - almost 2 months old

Not-so-gigantic Giganteus yet - 1 month old

I’m also very excited that I finally managed to get a couple of Kong plants growing! The Kong is one of the giant sunflower species. If you’ve ever looked it up online, you’ll remember the famous pictures of people looking absolutely dwarfed standing in front of what looks like a giant, conical sunflower bush. Yup, it’s the “King Kong” of sunflowers, and I hope we’ll be able to show them off in a few months! 8) No pictures today, because when you’ve seen one young sunflower plant growing, you’ve seen ‘em all – and there are two too many already in this post…

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