Try being depressed in the middle of a field of sunflowers. Just driving by a patch is a pretty potent mood-lifter, their vibrant rays of yellow petals fanning from spiraling centers ripening with seeds. They may be nature’s most optimistic plant, a living expression of botanical sun worship and radial symmetry.
“Looking at them is just awesome,” says Susan Bell of Caledonia. She and her husband Phillip have about three acres of the sun-loving blooms on Dodson Road. Susan likes to observe the honeybees at work among them, just one of several types of guests these plants attract.
Yes, it’s sunflower time in the Golden Triangle, and growers who got seeds in the ground by late spring have been enjoying the view. Lucky neighbors and passersby have, too. Call it spreading a little sunshine.
“They just make you smile,” says Mahala Salazar of Caledonia. At the Bells’ invitation, she and her sister, Kitty Brock, harvested blooms to combine in an old-fashioned churn with hydrangeas and Johnson grass for last Sunday’s floral centerpiece in the Border Springs Baptist Church sanctuary. From all reports, the result was “gorgeous.”
“There’s just something about sunflowers that makes you happy,” says Salazar. “It’s like the sunlight, it just brightens up your day when you see them.”
Variety show
Like the Bells, Bryant and Patricia Wiygul in the west Lowndes County Prairie are accustomed to the attention a golden sea of Helianthus annuus attracts. Drivers have been prone to pull over to gaze or snap photos of their seven acres of blooms.
“All the ladies in the neighborhood love me right now because they’re all cutting sunflowers,” Bryant Wiygul laughs. He’s been growing the plants for years, rotating locations. There is an art to the whole thing, he says. He’s had good luck with the Clearfield sunflower. The Clearfield herbicide production system controls a broad spectrum of tough weeds, like cocklebur and jimsonweed.
There are more than 500 varieties on the market, says Dr. Jeff Wilson. The regional horticulture specialist with the Mississippi State University Extension Service works with commercial horticulture growers in 22 north Mississippi counties and with many of the region’s farmers’ markets.
“I would say every farm I go to is growing a different type, which I think is a good thing. If three farmers are showing up at a farmers’ market with sunflowers, it provides more choices for the consumer,” Wilson says.
He sees a consistent upward trend in the number of Mississippi sunflower producers.
“Just even in the last two to three years, more people are growing,” he says. “And they’re planting more and more, increasing varieties, increasing colors and quantities, too.”
Sunflower is, of course, valued for the oil and seeds it produces (for humans and livestock) as well as its visual appeal, but Wilson isn’t aware of any area growers harvesting them for those commercial purposes.
The Bells and Wiyguls grow them primarily for the beauty the blooms add to a landscape and for the wildlife the flowers attract. A variety of birds, including finches and blackbirds, enjoy sunflower feasts. Seeds on the ground will benefit birds all winter, Wiygul says.
On the down side, too many deer do no field much good.
“When I planted sunflowers, I found out deer will eat anything,” Phillip Bell says, with a droll laugh.
Wiygul adds, “You can’t grow ’em where there are high concentrations of deer ’cause they’ll just eat ’em up.”
World’s tallest
“There are sunflowers out there as big as a dishpan when they bloom out,” says Phillip Bell. Height can vary wildly, too. Locally, they tend to range from smaller varieties perfect for a cheerful vase on the coffee table to 4-to-6-footers. If one has enough scaffolding at hand, it just might be possible to top the world’s tallest sunflower on record: 30-feet, 1-inch. That towering specimen grown by Hans-Peter Schiffer in Germany was verified by Guinness World Records Aug. 28, 2014. Incredible, but fairly impractical, except for a green-thumb like Schiffer trying to set a third world record.
In early May, Jerome Nettles of Starkville helped a friend put in about three acres of Peredovic Black, an oil seed type, in Oktibbeha County. That healthy field has produced some big ones standing 6-feet or more, something Nettles credits, in part, to having the soil analyzed by the Extension Service before planting.
“Soil testing is important before you ever drop in the first seed,” says Nettles, who has a master’s degree in agronomy. “It’s a huge, huge step in successful growing of anything, whether it’s sunflowers, turf or landscape beds. You’ve got to know what you’re working with.”
If the pH of the soil is off, it doesn’t matter how much water and fertilizer you pour into it, you’re going to have struggles, he adds.
Sunflowers are a phenomenal cover crop, Nettles says, a very pretty one that adds to the Oktibbeha property.
“It’s beautiful scenery, a beautiful place to go out and watch the wildlife coming in.”
Transient charm
As often is nature’s way, the sunflower’s beauty is fleeting. After bursting onto the scene, blooms decline within a week or two, even as the bounty of seeds in the head ripens to maturity.
These wonders of plant architecture have been symbols of health, happiness and hope to cultures throughout history. To ancients in Peru, it was a sacred plant in their temples of the sun. Native American tribes utilized them as food and in medicines to treat ailments from lung trouble to spider bites.
They have been described as “happy faces” capturing the sun, radiating luck and long life. Some folklore even holds that sunflowers can inspire prophetic dreams and transformation.
Dreaming aside, growers do agree that sunflowers can transform — a landscape, a tabletop, a mood or dull drive. But look quickly, before their time in the sun is done. Then wait patiently for next summer’s fields of gold.
Jan Swoope is the Lifestyles Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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