The Cultivation Academy wants to challenge everyone to grow a lot of sunflowers this year! Sunflowers are large, beautiful, and come in many different sizes and shapes. The sunflower is a flower that makes you happy. It is also a symbol of Ukraine. By growing sunflowers this year, we stand behind Ukraine's right to exist as a free country, free from war, violence, and humiliation. Before the invasion, Ukraine was the world's largest exporter of sunflower products (sunflower seeds, sunflower oil, and press residues for feed). No wonder the sunflower is the country's symbol. Do you want to support the Cultivation Academy's sunflower campaign?
In our gardens, sunflowers can fill many important functions, besides pleasing the eye – important ecosystem services!
The flowers have valuable nectar and pollen that can nourish wild bees and other insects that we would like to support in our gardens.
In the fall, the flower seeds provide food for birds. Or we can harvest the seeds ourselves and eat them as snacks. Or why not produce your own chicken feed?
Sunflower is a tall plant that binds a lot of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere when it grows during the summer. This means a lot of valuable organic material that can become soil improvers for next year's crops, whether it goes through a traditional garden compost or if you build compost piles that you grow in while composting is ongoing. The higher the organic matter content we can achieve in our soils, the healthier the micro-life in the soil, and the more fertile the soil is for our plants.
I (Hillevi) tried one year many years ago to make a ”hedge” of sunflowers as a boundary against the road. It looked nice. We used the variety Giganteus, which can grow up to four meters tall. It was fun; we had the village's absolutely largest sunflowers.
This year I thought I would plant sunflowers between the pumpkin plants. The sunflowers grow upwards and the pumpkins sideways, so they should be able to share the space well. In this way, I increase the carbon binding on a given area. Photosynthesis increases, and thus the sugar supply to the soil microorganisms, i.e., the soil's long-term fertility.
The easiest way to get lots of sunflower plants completely free is to empty the rest of this winter's birdseed into a box of soil already today!
If you want to grow for breakfast muesli, the variety should be chosen carefully. The seeds need to be large, numerous, and easy to shell. In the Swedish seed market, there are no varieties marketed specifically for this use. You have to experiment and ask the seed companies.
If you want to grow for chicken feed, the variety Peredovik seems to be very interesting because the development time is short and the seeds are unusually high in fat. According to information on the Kinnekulle Seed website, sunflower seeds can constitute about 5-10% of the chicken feed and contain essential amino acids that are lacking in, for example, peas, making it a nice complement.
Another thing you should know about sunflowers is that they are good at absorbing heavy metals and other toxins from the soil. Sunflowers are therefore used to remediate contaminated land. The heavy metals are then stored in the plant, which is subsequently handled as hazardous waste. Therefore, you should consider where you grow sunflowers for food, whether it is you or the birds that will eat. Avoid places that you suspect may be contaminated, e.g., where telephone poles have stood or where railway sleepers have been. But in completely ordinary garden soil, it works perfectly well. The sunflower seeds we buy in the store, however, are often grown in old leached soils in warmer countries that have not had the beneficial ice age that renewed the soils in our country. This means that there is a risk of natural occurrence of various heavy metals regardless of the cultivation method. The imported sunflower seeds should therefore be consumed in moderation.
Signs of spring
Now the movable chicken house has left the greenhouse and been placed outside in the garden. For the chickens, it became a ”downer” both because the cold returned this week and because they can no longer move freely in the garden but are enclosed with a movable fence. This became necessary because their soil cultivation in some sensitive areas became a bit too intense... Now they are instead engaged in moss removal in the ”designated area.” Throughout the summer, they will be moved around the garden and always have fresh grass and new exciting bushes to hide under.
For me, it was a big boost to get the chickens out of the greenhouse. Since February, plant raising and chickens have had to coexist in there. The plants are protected by nets that eventually become very dusty from all the dry soil that the chickens stir up. It was nice to be able to remove the nets, shake out the dust, supplement the sowing, and actually also be able to harvest the first salad leaves!
Last autumn, I put in some cold-resistant lettuce plants (Butterhead and Rouge d’Hiver) in a planting box covered with double cloths, bubble wrap, and nets. They have been standing still all winter, and many plants have succumbed, but barely half survived, and they are now thriving and yielding harvest. On February 14, I sowed various leafy vegetables under cloth and net directly in the ground along one wall in the greenhouse. Those that have taken well and are already yielding a small harvest are Salad Mustard (Sarepta Mustard), Arugula, and Namenia, all of which are pleasant, grateful, and cold-resistant plants from the cabbage family. When young, they are used in salads; as they grow, they are excellent for wokking.
Along the other wall of the greenhouse, I have now sown broad beans, sugar snap peas, rutabaga, radishes, and carrots. These are vegetables that can just as well grow in open fields. But of course, I hope for an earlier harvest before the field vegetables take over.
One thing to consider as we approach the spring planting: Make sure you have a moisture reservoir in the soil before you sow. After sowing, you will primarily water the surface!
In greenhouses/growing tunnels, the soil is always dry at this time and you may need to make deep furrows that you fill with water that slowly sinks in. Come back the next day and do the same thing again. In really dry soil, it’s almost like you have to ”dig down” the water. Then the surface needs to dry up a bit so that it’s possible to rake a seedbed.
After a normal summer and a normal winter, you usually don’t need to water before sowing in open ground, possibly in the actual sowing row with a fine-spouted watering can so that the seed gets direct contact with moist soil. But last summer was not normal and neither was this winter. Therefore, you need to ensure a moisture reservoir in the soil before sowing even in open ground this year. Dig a hole and check how the moisture is 25-30 cm down in your growing beds.
GOOD LUCK with the spring work, and take it easy!
Hillevi