I’ve always LOVED sunflowers and a dream of mine has been to one day have my own sunflower field. This year, that dream came true! And I cannot believe how easy it was to grow! Sunflowers are very low maintenance, and tend to grow on their own without too much caretaking. I’ve grown a small bed or row of sunflowers in the past, but I’ve never planted a field before. So, this year…I grew my own field, and I also learned a lot in the process! This is absolutely something that I will be doing again every year, and I have high hopes to improve upon it as I go.
My sunflower field has long since dropped and faded away, but I wanted to take a look back on the whole process and experience!
May 1, 2024 – Theo and I began preparing the field area. We had no idea what we were doing, but decided to try laying cardboard down to form the rows/walkways and to hopefully keep weeds at bay. Spoiler- this worked really well and will absolutely be the method we use again! We tried tilling the ground but it was nearly impossible and finally gave up and just decided to put the seeds onto the regular old ground.
May 8, 2024- Seeds went in! I actually tried two different methods for planting seeds. The first five rows of the field, I poked holes and buried the seeds in straight, uniform lines. This was taking FOREVER and I decided instead to just scatter the seeds for the remaining 10 rows, and then put compost on top of the scattered seeds. Spoiler alert: both methods grew the same time, the same rate, and the same level of success. Of course, the ones that I planted meticulously in straight rows were a bit neater than the rows of scattered seeds, but honestly it was only noticeable since I knew the planting method. I ordered my seeds on Amazon and got a large pack of a huge variety! In total I planted over 2000 seeds!
May 21, 2024- We came home from school on a beautiful sunny day to find that our Mulberry tree had tipped right over. It went right up to the edge of the sunflower field, but actually didn’t end up falling in the field at all. We debated chainsawing it up and getting it out of there, but ended up leaving it. Hopefully next year we won’t have a huge fallen tree right in my sunflower field!
June 1, 2014- We have BLOOMS! And lots of weeds, too. Haha.
June 2024- I made a commitment to weed for at least 10 minutes every day in June. I think I only missed one or two days of the month, and there were plenty of days that I did 30+ minutes in the field every day. I felt like the little red hen out there working away with no one helping me, but knew that the reward was going to be stunning! And I honestly really enjoyed weeding each day and watching the sunflower just grow, grow, grow!
My biggest regret from growing this sunflower field is that I didn’t take more regular progress pictures from the same angle. Next year I will make sure to take weekly progress pictures with a kid standing in the same spot each time to show how fast the sunflowers grow!
June 27, 2024- My first flower blooms! It’s a zinnia, which I haphazardly planted one row of. I didn’t realize how STUNNING sunflowers and zinnias look together, so for next year I’m planting way MORE zinnias! And I need to remember to plant them about two weeks later than the sunflowers, because the zinnia’s bloom so much earlier.
July 4, 2024- Had a little mini photoshoot in the field! It was around this time that it finally hit me that I would have a sunflower field this year! It was actually growing!
July 9, 2024- I spot my first bud! Actually, there are a dozen or so buds! The zinnia’s are looking so beautiful as well!
July 13, 2024- AND WE HAVE BLOOMS!!! I actually cried tears of joy.
July-August- From here on out, I just LOVED being in the sunflower field each day. I couldn’t get enough of the flowers! Each time I went out, I would find a new bloom to marvel at. It was truly the highlight of my summer!
August 30, 2024- I pulled the last blooms from the field. I think it was technically still in bloom for a few days beyond this, but there were no new blooms and the field faded quickly after that.
And that’s a wrap on my first sunflower field! Next year I plan to make improvement and make it a little bit bigger, along with coordinating my zinnia’s to bloom around the same time, and have many more zinnias! This year we had a friend who came out and did some photography sessions with the sunflowers, and eventually I would like to have a way that people can come and pick or buy sunflower bouquets.
Even now I just can’t get over the beauty of these sunflowers! I hope even seeing some of the pictures helped to brighten your day- I know I’ll be looking back at these photos during the dreary winter months, just looking forward to having sunflower blooms again in 2025!