Flowering Plants - Seeds

Uxbridge Township’s flower!

These delightful beauties in cheery pinks (my favourite colour!) are showstoppers in my full sun gardens. 

Daisy-like blooms sit atop long, slender stems with feathery leaves, forming a cloud of colour. Once blooming, you’ll have non-stop flowers until a hard frost.

They crawl with bumblebees, hoverflies, sweat bees and ladybugs; I love sitting quiet and close to a patch of Cosmos, listening to soft buzzing and watching the action. Small birds such as goldfinches and chickadees eat seeds from the dried flower heads.

An excellent cut flower, lasting a week or more. East Gwillimbury Garden Club 3rd place winner in 2023, any other annuals category.

Open-pollinated

Heirloom

Type: annual, but reliably self-seeds and returns in my Zone 5b garden

Colour: pink shades, from pale to dark crimson, some variegated, yellow centres

Mix of single, double and fluted blooms

Height: 30-183 cm (1-6 ft)

Soil: well drained, drought tolerant

Light: full to partial (6+ hours/day)

Planting: direct sow lightly, no more than 1/4” deep, in warm soil after last frost. For earlier blooms, start seeds indoors 4 weeks before last frost, then transplant outside after hardening off (LINK: how to harden off seedlings)

Care: low maintenance. Deadhead regularly

Bloom time: early summer - hard frost

Carly’s Tip: Water soil first, let saturate, then plant seeds. This prevent seeds – especially light, delicate ones not deeply sown – from moving/washing away.

Sunflowers are a must-grow annual each season - their bright, cheery faces make me smile, and I absolutely love them in fall bouquets. They're always covered in bees of all sizes, even ladybugs. Then the birds, squirrels and chipmunks feast on the seeds.

I adore Ring of Fire, with their chocolate brown centres surrounded by golden yellow petals that turn to red. People ask me about them every year. I find the more sun they get, the deeper the red colour.

Ring of Fire is a basal branching variety, so you get multiple blooms off each plant. When you're tight on space, this is a bonus. Succession plant the seeds for continuous blooms.

Chipmunks and squirrels LOVE sunflower seeds and small shoots, and will relentlessly dig up the seeds and/or chop the tender plants off. My neighbours have heard my sobs and swearing in equal measure over the years. Here are my tried and tested ways to fight them:

1. Direct sow seeds in containers or pots, then completely cage them with small-holed wire mesh (forget plastic - they will eat right through it) for as long as possible
2. Start seeds indoors 4 weeks before last frost, then transplant to the garden with tall, wire mesh collars around the seedlings and DO NOT remove all season

Note: I learned the hard way that sunflowers are allelopathic, meaning they give off toxins that impede the growth of or even kill other plants. They also deplete soil of nutrients. Because I grow so much food in containers, I now grow my sunflowers in separate pots and place them near their fruit, veg and herb companions

Type: Annual

Height: 4-5 ft.

Light: full sun

Soil: heavy feeders, sunflowers need organically-rich soil that's well draining

Planting: Sow in warm soil after the danger of frost, 1/2" deep, 6" apart

Harvest: 8-12 weeks