Author: Amaral Farms

Sunflowers are just about the epitome of sunshine and summertime. Bright and sunny, they seem to be smiling as they track the sun with their tall heads. Sunflowers are so easy to grow. Their is so much about Sunflowers to them, from creating privacy in the garden to enticing birds or providing a beautiful bouquet of cut flowers. Anyone can plant sunflower seeds and enjoy the benefits of this wonderful plant. We’ll tell you everything you need to know.

How To Plant Sunflower Seeds

Pointed Down

Sunflower seeds will sprout best if you plant them with the narrow pointed seed-end facing down. While it isn’t strictly necessary to do this, it does give the sunflowers the best possible start in life. And why wouldn’t we want to give them that? They’re going to repay us with beautiful blooms and nutritious seeds after all. The narrow end of the seed is where roots will emerge, so putting this end down saves the plant from having to right itself in the ground.

Place the sunflowers 1 to 2 inches deep, point-down, every 6 inches or so, and then cover them up. Make sure to keep them moist until they sprout. This should only take about a week. Once they have grown into handsome little seedlings, thin them out so that each plant is about 2 feet from its neighbor if you have planted giant sunflowers. If you are growing dwarf sunflowers, you can grow them closer, sometimes as close as 6 inches.

Amaryllis are large, trumpet-shaped flowers that bring a punch of color to any home or garden. Gardeners typically start with amaryllis bulbs, which look similar to an onion, that then sprout long, thin leaves and the iconic blooms. Amaryllis flowers come in eye-catching colors, can be over twelve inches wide, and can last for over seven weeks! But after that first flower starts to fade, many will ask: what do you do with amaryllis after they bloom?

The Basics of Re-Blooming

Amaryllis thrives in an environment with a nine-month wet period and a three-month dry period. By mimicking this cycle, you can encourage your plant to re-bloom after a forced dry or dormant period. Removing all foliage prior to the dormant period allows the bulb to retain vital nutrients and energy stores. Most importantly for all plants, provide your amaryllis with all the water and fertilizer it needs while it is growing.

Orchids are essentially indoor plants. They might seem relatively easy to take care of but the pruning step of planting these fairly little plants is a bit technical. Great care is required while pruning them. Some of the simple steps could be followed, to make it a healthy plant inside your garden. So, grasp your scissors. I will tell you when you need to prune and how to do it perfectly. 

Benefits 

Pruning is necessary for your orchids, it keeps them fresh and healthy. It also provides you a chance to detect unfolding problems. Another important benefit of pruning is that you remove or cut the diseased tissue. This tissue may be the habitat of disease-causing fungi, bacteria, or viruses. The most important benefit of Orchid pruning is that more buds and flowers appear after pruning. 

Flowering bulbs are the plant most closely associated with Spring. Not sure of that statement? Easter is celebrated after the Spring equinox and the white lily is the traditional Easter flower. If your goal is to have a yard full of flowering bulbs in the Spring, you’ll need to get started in late fall. Where to get them? There are many places online where you can buy bulbing plants easy enough, some sites even specialize in bulbing plants alone. However if you have a bulbing flower, they generally propagate themselves quite easily. Taking them out of their pot and separating them out is an easy way to grow the number you have for next year. In a future blog we will discuss doing this and storing them for next year. For this blog we want to introduce you to a list of bulbs you might want to plant yourself.

Bluebells (Hyacinthoides spp.) 

If you’ve ever seen the striking blue daze flowers, also known as Evolvulus glomeratus or dwarf morning glory, chances are you wanted some for your own garden, front yard, or house. These plants have a unique bright blue color. Not purple that looks blue, but true blue, which is actually quite rare in the flower world. This delightful evergreen shrub grows very low to the ground, making it perfect for covering sizeable areas.

Blue Daze Flowers: Evolvulus Glomeratus

These funnel-shaped, small blue flowers are about one inch in diameter, and the plant itself will grow about two or three feet in each direction and about one foot high. They also need full sun and are hardy enough to offer their amazingly blue blooms during the entire summer all the way to the first frost. They’re resilient, so they will thrive and flourish in areas that are maybe too dry or hot to grow anything else.