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Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Evening Sun Sunflower Life-cycle (Seed Week & Seed Give-Away)

I am learning so many new things related about seeds and enjoy my time reading all the inspiring posts that have been linked during “Seed Week”. I hope other readers and visitors has benefit and enjoy this “Seed Week” as well. For the Northern Hemisphere this will be a chance to plan your spring planting and the opposite hemisphere will also have some ideas for winter planting or thinking about seed saving this year. Well for you lucky gardeners that can grow all year round in the tropics will also help introduce us new tips and warm-loving vegetables that other climates will like to try which is very popular nowadays due to globalisation. Thank you for joining in, sharing your thoughts and experiences for “Seed Week”.
What is “Seed Week”? 
Sharing our own experiences and gain knowledge about collecting, propagating, growing seeds, bulbs, tubers, rhizomes, or cuttings and can be about how to keep them in top shape. The wonderful thing about collecting seeds from plants that thrive in your place is that each year and the next year, the seeds will become more and more adapt to your garden environment. It will also save money, instead of buying the same seeds every year, you can try a new variety or trade seeds with other gardeners. Sharing is a wonderful thing. Please join us for this seed week. I will randomly choose 5 participants for home saved-seeds give-away. I like to share my home saved-seeds to you.  There is a linky to link your post at the bottom of this post. It can be a new post or and old one, also not limited to one post only.
Here is a compilation of inspiring post link from around the world since my previous posting:
HERB
FRUIT
OTHERS
PROPAGATION
SEED SAVING
VEGETABLES
FLOWER
Evening Sun Sunflower
Its the middle of the week, people are busy with office-work and housework try to juggle so many things. Sometime we need a break, so today I decided to post colourful pictures for you of my Evening Sun Sunflower photo collections. The seeds are colourful as well. I was exhausted last night because I stayed late in the laboratory after 10PM so I did not have the strength anymore to do some writing. I was more like a zombie staring at space cause my brain was still hyper functioning but the body can’t move. This morning I felt a bit energised after harvesting some vegetables. We can’t do much gardening in the morning these days as it gets warm to quick here. I have to wait for more cooler weather in the afternoon. Today, we in Australia is having a public holiday celebrating Australia Day. Here is a cheery sunflower to brighten up your day!
Evening sun sunflower seedlings Evening sun sunflower can grow very tall sometime about 2 metre tall. It is easy to differentiate evening sun sunflower seedlings than other sunflower varieties if you are growing them in the same time. Evening sun sunflower at early seedling stages have red stalk.
colourful evening sun sunflowerThe colourful shades of Evening sun sunflower.  Which one are your favourites?
Evening sun sunflower is hardy with the warm weather here and blooms longer than other variety.
harvest evening sun seedsThe deep burgundy shade evening sun sunflower bloom is a bit rare. Because of this I wanted to catalogue which seeds will give which colour at first. However, it seems that even same colour bloom will have different colour seeds too. To make sense of this we will have to refer back to our biology classes about Mendelian inheritance or Mendel Law that were based on an experiment in hybridizing garden peas that were conduct by an Austrain monk named Gregor Mendel. So to understand this, I believe the deep burgundy shade bloom have a homozygous recessive allele.In heterozygous, the burgundy colour will not show up. As a geneticist myself, the chance of getting deep burgundy shade bloom will be less than 25%. Since there are other shades as well, it will be much much much lesser than that.  Evening sun sunflower have so many blooms in one plant. If you are a beginner collecting evening sun sunflower don’t worry if you don’t do it correctly the first time, you still have the next chance. Apart from harvesting celery seeds this month, we are beginning to get busy harvesting evening sun sunflower seeds. The birds and mice have been at them. Fortunately, they are many for each one share.
Evening sun sunflower 2011 (20)
Evening sun sunflower have different seeds colours.  Our Evening sun sunflower home-saved seeds offspring from previous summer have travel as far as Malaysia now. I am happy that the seeds are growing in my blogger friend garden right now, in Kwee Peng ~Onenezz, Malar ~ My Little Garden and other friend as well. I wonder which country will our fresh home-saved seed will travel next? The winner of the home-saved seed give-away will received some of this seeds if he/she like to.
For more cottage flora ideas visit Fishtail Cottage.

30 comments:

  1. Always happy to see your sunflowers. This post makes me wanna go back home right now to take some photos of my Evening Sun and show them to you. Maybe next post... stay tunned, lol.

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  2. maybe I should have a sunflower plant at my place. It looks great but would it be kinda late for Melbourne weather?

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  3. Diana, love all the colours of your evening sunflowers. Ive not sown the seeds you gave me yet, cos Im making new flower beds. Looking forward to those lovely flower seeds you gave blooming in my garden.Thanks for hosting this great Seed Week, learnt a lot about seed savings.

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  4. Dear Zombie, How nice to have all those huge sunflowers peeping from the other side of the fence!!! Mine might just start to bloom during CNY. They are not as tall as yours. I wonder how we can get them to grow taller. Is it through more fertilizer? Do you fertilize often? Your theory about the probability of getting specific colours reminds me again about stem propagation. The colours should be pre-dertermined with stem propagation. I have tried successfully for many plants but not sunflower stem.

    Will let you know when I get around to going to the post office.

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  5. Your evening sunflowers are beautiful. When I first bought sunflower seeds, I thought I bought evening sunflowers. Unfortunately, they were all yellow. I have saved seeds and maybe this year they will show some red and burgundy color...

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  6. They are beautiful! I love the fact that you planted many in a row like that. The pretty blooms can really put a smile to a face! I had a pretty busy day today. It's so nice to see all these pretty sunflowers. Now I am so looking forward to sowing some sunflower seeds. Thanks for the details also :-D Have a pleasant evening.

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  7. Milka~ I am happy that the sent seeds are already growing in your garden.

    Hafiz~ Last year I did some trial on sowing some sunflower seeds in autumn. I had sunflower blooming in my garden in June! If you sow some seeds now you have to give a lot of TLC because it is too hot now. Make sure you water them a lot. The one I sowed at the back of my fence is in September without any pampering or watering at all until summer arrived.Its not too late to plant sunflower you still can but will be much depend on how hot is Melbourne now. I am planning to sow another batch of sunflower at end of March when the weather is a bit cool and no setback from the high temperatures.

    P3chandan~ Wah banyak project besar ni, Finished your big veggie bed now flower bed. I can't wait too see plants that you will grow flourish in these new beds.

    Kwee Peng~ I am a lazy girl, I don't fertilise them ;-). Usually after I prepare a bed for next planting with manure and green waste. I don't usually fertilise them anymore. When the evening sun sunflower bloom , they still grow. They were flowering before I can see them from the backyard and now the flower are spying on us. I found that when the weather are increasingly warmer it trigger the evening sun sunflower to bloom much faster. It must be a way of survival for them, to produce seeds quickly for reproduction before they have to say good bye. What nice timing when CNY is just around the corner.

    vrtlarica ana~ My first time planting them, they were mostly yellow too, just a few with different shade of colour. The one with the very maroonish bloom is our first since we started growing this variety. I hope this year you have other colours as well.

    Stephanie~I am glad that the sunflower power up your energy after a long day. I have this new variety of sunflower that I am planning to sow in autumn to avoid cross-pollination ;-).

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  8. There are so many beautiful sunflowers, I don't think I could pick a favorite as they all look so nice.:) Your information on Mendelian inheritance was fascinating. I had to look it up and read more about it as I have never heard of Mendel before...very interesting.

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  9. So many beautiful sunflowers! must be great having them around. Back at home we usually got some wild ones growing in the summer.

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  10. I have learnt a lot from the contributors to your seed week and experienced gardeners sure have lots of great tips which save us a lot of money. I'm so sorry I didn't participate yet as I'm very busy with my CNY preparations and work and guess what, my cooker just broke down today :( Your lovely sunflowers sure brightened up my day. It's been a long time since I last grown a big sunflower.

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  11. Happy and cheerful sunflowers!

    I sneeze a lot around their pollen and still grow them, that's how much I love sunflowers!

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  12. Thanks for the advice! Currently Melbourne's weather is like the spring weather 15 degree at night and 23-27 in day time. Anyway I'll give it a go. Off to Bunnings to get some seeds!

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  13. thank you so much for visiting my blog and inviting me to partake in this - Those bronze sunflwoers are beautiful and I would love to try some in my garden. I am off right now to post about seeds and initiate my own seed give-away! will link to this post. Can you post seeds overseas? Not sure if I must say I can only send seeds within Australia.

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  14. MKG
    Why is there a red 'x' below my avatar? Is there something wrong with me? :P

    cinafong

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  15. Your sunflowers has many lovely blooms from one plant! The ones I plant many years ago, only have the most 3 or 4 flowers growing from one single plant. I love how your plants really flourish with many blooms. I think both colours are beautiful. I have just link-up another post on seeds of sawtooth coriander!

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  16. Fantastic post! I'm coming back tomorrow morning with my cup of coffee to read thru everything. Looks like a lot of fantastic info....you should link this post to Cottage Flora Thursdays!!!

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  17. The sunflowers are so pretty! I wish i'm your neighbour so that i can see them every morning and evening! I hope to see my sunflower soon!

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  18. Strange I posted amessage - I think yesterday - and it isn't here. I just siad that the colour range of the sunflowers is beautiful!

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  19. Mr. H~ Are you by any chance planning to do an experiment on hybridization this coming warm season?

    fer~ I can never imagine sunflower growing wildly. It must be a very pretty sights.

    Autumn Belle~ I hope you cooker can be fix or you have to get a new one. You must have been cooking a lot to prepare for CNY. I wish I can join the festive season in Malaysia. Sometime Home-sick lah.

    Rosey~ It feels weird not having sunflower in summer now, that how I am attached to the sunflower ;-).

    Hafiz~ Hopefully Bunnings still have some sunflower for you to pick.

    Africanaussie~ Its a pity we can't receive seed from overseas. I was excited reading about your seed give-away. Absolutely what I wanted to have. So happy.

    CinaFong~ You must have imagined it;-) Do you realised that if you turn the word X in any direction it still is X. Even though you flip it.

    Kitchen flavours~ Thank you for posting about the sawtooth coriander. I have always wanted to see its transformation.

    Fishtail Cottage~ I am glad you are enjoying it. Thank you so much for the invitation.

    Malar~ They grow very quick Malar. Not too soon they will greet you everyday.

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  20. oh yeah they just popped out of nowhere, we sometimes treat it like weed because they can get a bit big and overwhelming, still they are very pretty

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  21. I think your seed week has turned out to be a great idea! I'm so inspired to save as many seeds as possible from this year's garden. Usually I only save the very very easy ones and the hard to find ones.

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  22. I love sunflowers, they are so big and the colors, it's like to have the sun in your garden.
    And I always keep some seeds for me and my friend, and of course for the birds.
    Great post.

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  23. Yes, I do hope to become more involved with creating a few of my own plant crosses in the future as I find the whole hybrid thing to be quite fascinating. So far we have purposely crossed some of our corn, carrots, squash, kale, and kohlrabi just for the sake of experimentation. We have one strain of squash that seems promising and I have some hope for the kale/kohlrabi cross...we shall see. The corn results were not very good and I am still playing around with a few varieties of carrots. We are also trying to save some of our own potato seeds and grow them out for new varieties.

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  24. Its amazing how a small little seed can produce such a beautiful bountiful flower. I rarely use seeds to plant in my garden as I opt to cuttings and plantlets. Most of them are perennials and they just exist for years.

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  25. Hi MKG, it has been a while since I have visited your blog. You have changed the design, and have been doing amazingly wonderful things, and linking up with so many other bloggers! I have some opium poppy seeds. I'm not sure what the legal position is re posting them through the mail. cheers, cm

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  26. Sue~ I also had the same problem, I thought I left a comment on your post but is not there.

    Fer~ A big pretty weed. Wildlife will have enough food if many of this big weeds are around.

    Eliza~ I also did the same thing , but now I will try to me more diligent in collecting seeds.

    Ellada~ Ah yes, I like how you describe it. Having your own special sun in the garden.

    Mr.H ~ I am interested to know how your experiment result will be. We have to wait until we have more bigger space to grow things to start experimenting on producing a good vegetable strain. I am going to ask a silly question but it always have been hovering in my mind, potato is solanum belong to the same group with eggplant and tomato. Potato has flower, yet unlike its sisters, instead of fruiting it grows tubers. Is it possible that potato actually have seeds. Rather than growing them from tuber "seed potato". Do they really have actual seeds? Or are you cross-pollinating the flowers?

    James~ From cuttings you will have the same exact DNA. Seeds offer diversity as it is not a perfect clone of its parent. Sometime it will give you some surprises.

    Catmint~ Sorry, I am not sure either. How long usually poppy seeds is viable?

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  27. That is an excellent question. Yes, potatoes form little green fruits that look like tiny hard green tomatoes and inside these are the seeds. Once the seeds are planted they will go on to produce a whole different type of potato that will differ from the parent plant. Here is a good explanation on growing potatoes from seed.:)

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  28. thank you for the packets of seeds - so many different ones I want to try!

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  29. lovely, lovely ... sunflowers u have. do u have spare seeds. would like to try them.

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  30. lovely sunflowers u have. super. if u have spare seed. pls mail to thila_2004@yahoo.com

    thanks

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