Hello and welcome to Gardening with Ben. You'll go to a podcast for all
things green and growing. I'm Ben, your allotment guide and here to help
you cultivate your garden and your passion for plants. Whether you're a seasoned gardener
or just starting out, this podcast is for you. Each episode will dig
into tips, tricks, and techniques to make your garden and allotment thrive from
planting, sewing, and growing. We will share all the tips and add
advice. We will also have regular episodes talking about what we have been up
to on the alltment. So sit back, grab a brew and enjoy today's
episode. Hello, and welcome back to Gardening with Ben for a brand new
episode. Well, we're busy, busy, busy at the moment, and
we are so busy, especially down at the allotment and with every what I'm
doing at the moment. We're busy getting all the seeds ready, what's growing
in the greenhouse ready to be planted out, as I've got loads more to
be planted out. We're ready to harvest that garlic from my allotment as well.
That's about ready, and we're going to start harvesting our lettue as well,
which is coming on really well. They're getting the heads inside them now
and they're looking absolutely delicious. And over the next few days, we're going
to be recording more and more podcasts and also more and more videos. So
if you've not checked out my YouTube channel, go and check them out and
give it a follow and a subscribe. As I'm posting so many videos at
the moment, I'm trying to push out my YouTube channels, so keep following
that for lots of videos with tips and handy hints on there. What I'm
sharing with you all from the allotment and today's topic, what we're going to
talk about is about growing sunflowers, growing large sunflowers. Now, sunflowers are
a phenomenal flower and if you've never tried growing a sunflower before, you should
really give it a chance. Now, you've still got time to plant some
sunflower seeds if you want to give it a dry So go out get some
seeds and give them a try. Cat from Amazon. You can get them
from the range where I get mine from. And yeah, plenty of places
sell sunflower seeds and they're so easy to grow. Well, you just have
to be careful at the beginning because slugs can come along and nibble them up
and you'll end up losing them. But if you plant them out once they're
big enough and tall enough, then you've got more chance of protecting them from
the slugs from eating them. So how do we grow nice tall sunflowers?
Now, one variety which does grow absolutely massive is a Russian sunflower. These
grow absolutely huge. You can get some flower up to thirty foot if you're
lucky. And the best thing about sunflowers is that if you grow plenty of
them, you can use the stalk as canes the next year because they dry
out rock hard and the perfect for canes and supports and stuff like that,
so it saves money on buying canes. So just grow lots of sunflowers this
year and you'll have loads of canes for your runner beans and supports next year.
It's one thing that I use. I use all the canes that absolutely
rock solid. You cannot break them most of the time. That hard.
But yeah, they make great supports and great canes for the allotment. So
how do you grow big tall sunflowers or and what are the tips off a
growing decent sunflowers? Well, I've grown mine in my greenhouse, and then
I potted them on, grew them to a decent size, and then I
planted them out. Yes, I did use a few slug palets around them
because I wanted to protect them. I wanted them to be saying and get
growing. But I don't need the slug paletts. Now there are a decent
size and they should survive well. But once they start getting quite tall,
you need to start supporting them by putting the cane in there, as that
will get it growing straight and it will support it from stepping, which you
do not want once you've started. But obviously, when you're fastening it up
to a cane, what you need to make sure is that you don't tie
it too tight. You need to leave a bit of movement in it,
because the thickness of the stalk on the sunflower will get really thick as it
gets bigger, and obviously you don't want the wire what you support tying it
to the cane with to cut through the stem and damage it. So you
need to make sure that you do leave some movement in it. And if
you're watering them on a regular basis, like on a daily basis, you
could be fastening it up every few days, because once sunflowers start growing,
they start growing fast, and I mean really fast. And every time I
go to the oatman, I will give them some water because they are thirsty
drinkers. They are really thirsty drinkers, so yeah, make sure you give
them plenty of water. When it comes to feeding the sunflowers, I tend
to put some chicken pellets around the bottom, which will feed the sunflowers for
two to three months. So I'll go around again in a couple of months
time and sprink up some more chicken pellets around it and they will break down
over the few months and feed the plant. And obviously they're good for when
you're watering them for when it rains, it will keep feeding the plant,
which is something that you want to do. I also use liquid feed as
well. Once a week, I'll just give some food to them and hope
that they'll drink it and it will help them boost them and grow them.
And I've done a YouTube video on this. It should be appearing in the
next couple of days, if it's not already up there already on what feed
I use for my sunflowers, So make sure you do check that out.
But obviously once to get to a decent size, you can have little competitions
with the family and friends to see who can grow the tallest sunflower on the
allotment or in the garden and have a little competition between one another. I've
once grown one really tall, and I mean so tall it will like at
home, it will fasten up to the drain pipe it with that tall,
and I want to some flower competition for growing the tallest one. So it
is pretty good fun. And then obviously once it's come to the end of
the year, when the head's dying off, you can either save the seeds
to grow again next year. You can leave hang the seed heads up for
the birds to eat because the birds will love to eat the sunflower seeds,
or you can't actually roast them. I've never tried roasted some flower seeds,
so if you have tried roasting some flower seeds, please do let me know
and share with me if you actually like them or not, because I do
like to find out these things. So yeah, that is how you grow
massive sunflowers. And regular water, like once every day or once every two
days. Give it some water to drink and it will grow massive, especially
when it's flowering. Make sure you keep watering it and give it some liquid
feed once a week to two times a week, and put some chicken pellets
down around it as well to give it that extra kick and keep feeding it.
So I hope you've enjoyed this little podcast today talking about how to grow
massive sunflowers down at the allotment of the garden. Make sure you do give
us a follow on here. If you're not following it already, please do
subscribe to my YouTube channel where I'm sharing tons of videos and putting about two
or three videos up to day at the moment as I'm trying to get it
out there and get it get it going again, So please do give my
YouTube channel the follow. If you've got any questions, feel free to message
me on Instagram Gardening with Ben and yeah, I hope you've enjoyed it.
Make sure you give this a share to a friend or two as well who
will enjoy it. So until next time, remember keep smiling, keep shining,
and keep gardening with Ben. Everyone, thank you for joining me on
this episode of Gardening with Ben. I hope you have found some useful tips
and inspiration for your own gardening and a lot then journey. If you have
enjoyed today's episode, please make sure to follow and subscribe to the podcast so
you'll never miss a new episode. And if you have a moment, I'd
love for you to leave a review and share the podcast, but fellow gardening
enthusy asks your support helps us grow this community and continue bringing you great content.
We can also follow us on social media on every platform The Whole Gardening
with Ben for daily gardening tips and mondays. Happy gardening, and until next
time, remember keep smiling, keep shining, and keep gardening with Ben