Sun seedy goings on!

Between my last post and today I am a sunflower down!
Its not toppled, its not broken, its gone!
The whole 104cm of it and its pot.
Whats even more strange is... whoever or whatever has taken it left the 'good' one. The one with the flowering heid.
I am now wondering if its been taken to be cared for. Has social services come and taken it as I have been neglecting?
Hmmmm, the mystery continues.

Hello Petal

Yay! My first flower!

Leaf size for comparison ...not even half that of Helen's mighty giants!!

Doubled in size

My sunflowers have near doubled in size since I first measured them. They are now a staggeringly humongous 105cm tall.

Not bad for still being in a small pot surrounded by motorbikes.

One has the makings of a little flower. Its exciting times.

height?

who needs height?! Leaf size is where its at!!
(no photoshopping i promise)

It's either the Highland water or we've got an expert in Adobe Photoshop!

Well done if it is that size Matt/Jenny but I am a wee bit sceptical. For a start we don't see the whole plant. Jenny could be either holding a pot or is actually on her knees. When you mentioned Inverness it immediately entered my mind about a lot of photos that have emanated from around there about some monster in the Loch. Not your work as well perchance? The leaves also look rather small compared to the rest of us. Could be you've got the dreaded Japanes Bindweed instead of a sunflower---better destroy it before the Ministry of Agriculture, never mind Inverness Airport, move in!

Compared to yours my attempts are nowhere as large. Problem with the one at the fence is it only gets the sun(when it's there) in the afternoon because of a cherry tree screening it. It has still managed to get over six feet. Wooden slats are 6 inches wide and gap is the same.

I'm useless with Photoshop so have had to include the unadulterated photos.

Flying High

Here's a wee photo of one of our flowers along with my wife, Jenny. For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of meeting my delightful wife I should probably mention that she is over 9ft tall - she used to be in the circus and everything.



It's not all good news though - we've been in trouble with the authorities - Inverness airport have told us to stop watering our sunflowers because they are interfering with their airspace and the planes are having to use a different approach! I haven't heard of any similar problems down in South Laggan though.

--Matt

Flower power

Despite a battering from the wild winds a few weeks ago (that resulted in a near death experience for my sunflowers) they are now nearly as tall as the clothes pole!


There's significant damage to the lower leaves...


But look! The flowers are on their way!!


Hurrah!!

... oh no it's not!

My Sunflower is much bigger than yours ...

Here's the pride of the bunch (height wise), I'm 180cm tall, so I reckon this one is at about 2 meters high and not yet ready to flower ..... if it makes you feel better, mine will all be dead and rotting when you all have beautiful flowers everywhere.

Gardening Tips

It seems that England beat Scotland not just in football and Rugby but also in sunflower growing (no harm in digging up hundreds of years of Scot-Anglo hatred now is there?). As us English are obviously all smug patronising bastards, I thought I'd give you Scots some growing tips:-)

The clue to growing sunflowers is in the name - they need sun to flower. In Brighton we have it ... don't worry though I'm sure you'd win the Rainflower growing competition:-)

(For those of you who don't appreciate my poor taste in humour, please don't send Mel Gibson down here to rip out my heart ...).

Heatwave in Brighton

Thanks to the recent heatwave in brighton, and my general excellent gardening skills, I now have a garden full of Triffids. The BBC are doing a remake of 'Day of the Triffids' and have contacted me to borrow some of my sunflowers as props.

Here's the proof

Disaster - but i think its fixed now?!

Last week I got so carried away with it being sunny (for a change) that I forgot to water my sunflowers!!
6 days went by and I looked over to see 2 dry sticks with yellow crinkled leaves. Oh oh!

A mad dash to the kitchen sink with the measuring jug and 2 litres of water each I could only hope they would recover from this drought.

They got 2 litres a day for 5 days and little prune with the kitchen scissors and things are looking good. Green stalks, green leaves, tall, happy and swaying in the little breeze we have.
They also have a new home as motorbike number 4 has moved in to their patch.

I am hoping to re-pot soon. Slighty worried I am being over adventurous in this green fingered malark. Don't know if I can revive them for a 2nd time round!!