Grow your own Sunflower House!!

Thanks Bella for featuring my Sunflower Hut! : )




A few years ago we started a new summer tradition - we plant a sunflower house! It's fun for the kids, educational, teaches them responsibility as they must keep it watered and weeded, and it has a fun reward at the end of summer - a place to play, sunflower seeds, beans and pretty flowers!   It's really easy and so much fun!

Here's how we do it:

In April (or after last frost) mark an 8 x 8 foot square (or larger) where you want your sunflower house.  You can go ahead and place landscaping fabric in the middle to keep weeds away if you'd like, or add it later as needed.   Leave a space about a foot wide for a door somewhere!! Next buy 5 or 6 or more packets of various sunflower seeds, but make sure at least one packet has mammoth sunflower seeds! They grow TALL, and form the walls of your house! 

Look for flowers that grow to a variety of heights, too - some 12'. some 6', some 4', some 2' etc. That way it will be thick and full!  We got some smaller sunflowers for cutting,  plus Lemon Queen, Chianti & Red Sun (couldn't find the Strawberry Blonde ones this year, but these are both a pretty red!) and other varieties.  Also buy one or two packets of morning glory seeds, (we got regular & giant) and one or two packets of beans! This year I bought Kentucky Blue Pole beans.   Lowes, Home Depot & Wal-mart all have a variety of seeds for under $2 a packet!  We also bought a biodegradable weed control fabric and the tiny little stakes that go with it - those were about $13 total at Lowes.

You'll put one mammoth seed per packet directions (make sure to follow the directions on spacing them apart - they need room between!  Then go back and randomly plant the other sunflower seeds between and around the mammoth seeds.    Finally add the morning glory and bean seeds at various spots around your house perimeter. Make sure to keep them watered well.  Watch for sprouts!  Tick tock, tick, tock...days will go by.  Ours took 4 days to sprout little plants!


These pics are from 2008 ~ look how tiny my little David is in these!! Now that he's 7 he looks a lot more grown up!

Just planted our seeds!

A few days later - sprouting plants!

Different varieties grow side by side in perfect harmony! : )



Keep them watered!!





Add landscaping cover to keep weeds out of the middle!



Getting bigger!



WOW! Everything is growing so fast!

love it!

Strawberry Blonde Sunflower

See all the different plants? Beans, Morning Glories and Sunflowers!!

Starting to look like a sunflower house!

We added some stakes for everything to grow around and add height, not sure if you can see them in any of the pics!



My little guy loves growing a sunflower house!

Found one more - it's about a week later than the pic above - we had driven to the doctor's office in Suwanee, then stopped at Fresh Market on the way home for their awesome cupcakes! Mmmm.  The sunflowers were finally taller than D!

Still needs about 4 weeks to finish growing, but look how tall! The flowers eventually get to be about 6 - 8" in diameter (just the seed pod part!!)

 And here's where I confess to being a TERRIBLE mom.  The last few photos above were taken the first week of August, when our kids go back to school.  After that, life got CrAzY.  I never took another sunflower house photo - not ONE!  And I didn't take the first picture of our house in 2009.  2010, we skipped planting one at all.   However, this year's sunflower house is already planted and the little seedlings are already out and soaking up the glorious sunshine!  I PROMISE I'll take lots of pics, through the whole process, because I want you to see how gorgeous this sunflower house looks fully grown!!

So to sum it up ~ you'll have beans for eating, morning glories to add beauty to the yard, and the gorgeous sunflowers! It's a hideout for the kids (and maybe a bunny or two!?) and also a cutting garden for mom towards the end of summer! We even saw evidence that the deer from our woods were carrying entire sunflowers/seeds back into the woods behind our house for eating! Not to mention the birds who will eat seeds too! Your yard will be popular with kiddos, birds, and animals! lol

PLEASE send me your pics or a link to your blog about it if you plant a sunflower house - I can't wait to see them!!

UPDATE:  Found a couple 2009 pics  -  but again, petered out on taking pics once school started - it's a pattern with me! lol

Here is a June 2009 pic - we used stakes from the get-go that year so the plants would grow right up on them and be sturdier.   Not sure why DH had one in the middle like that - lol!

  Here is a picture from July 09~ about the same time - it's the first week of August, when my teenage stepson Robert was getting ready to go home to Arizona after spending the summer with us. The pic was of the kids, but the sunflowers were probably about 4' tall. I shot over them, but at 5' tall, I still got them in the shot! The sunflowers are getting tall and you'll see how the greenery from the stems and leaves provides a "wall", but this still had a good 4 weeks or so to grow.  This year we planted earlier than ever - I want to have the hut fully grown before school starts!!

Update:  I'm not sure why,  but our hut never really grew taller than knee height this year. : (  It may be because we used the same area each time?  Maybe the nutrients in the soil were just worn out?   Probably won't do this in 2012 because my kiddos are getting too big, they never even went out there this summer to play.  : (  Makes me sad.....