{"id":1978,"date":"2011-09-26T12:00:25","date_gmt":"2011-09-26T16:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/?p=1978"},"modified":"2011-09-26T18:48:20","modified_gmt":"2011-09-26T22:48:20","slug":"october-starts-out-with-fall-sunflowers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/2011\/09\/26\/october-starts-out-with-fall-sunflowers\/","title":{"rendered":"October Starts Out With Fall Sunflowers"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Helianthus spp. at Knoxville, TN Garden Center<\/p><\/div>\n

I thank the person who gave me\u00a0a native swamp sunflower (Helianthus angustifolia<\/em>). This long-lived perennial appears to have its own internal clock\u00a0for blooming around the first day of October.\u00a0Its long narrow rough-textured leaves average 6 inches in length. The 2-3 inch wide flowers appear first on top of the tall 6 to 7 \u00a0foot plants,\u00a0and numerous floral side branches\u00a0soon follow.<\/p>\n

Fall sunflowers are\u00a0best grown in full sun\u00a0to insure\u00a0shorter sturdier plants which need no staking. Plants growing in partially shaded sites do not branch well and produce fewer flowers.\u00a0 If you have no room for 6-10 foot plants, cut them back by half once or twice before the mid- August. Pruning improves branching.<\/p>\n

Swamp sunflowers are abit hoggish when it comes to soil moisture. Established plants\u00a0possess moderate drought\u00a0and great heat tolerances. Do not fertilize fall sunflowers as they are voracious feeders and tend to need staking, a chore I like to avoid.<\/p>\n

In ten years plants have never become invasive in my garden.\u00a0 I suspect the late flowers\u00a0have not enough time to mature viable seeds. Two other fall sunflowers to\u00a0select for your fall garden are 18- inch tall \u2018Lowdown\u2019 willowleaf (H. salicifolius<\/em> \u2018Lowdown\u2019) and 6-8 foot tall Helianthus<\/em> x \u2018Lemon Lady\u2019.<\/p>\n

Helianthus spp<\/em>. are\u00a0winter hardy in the Southern Appalachian region (USDA zones 6 and 7). Plant fall sunflowers from March thru July so that plant roots have adequate time to become well anchored and survive the winter cold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I thank the person who gave me\u00a0a native swamp sunflower (Helianthus angustifolia). This long-lived perennial appears to have its own internal clock\u00a0for blooming around the first day of October.\u00a0Its long narrow rough-textured leaves average 6 inches in length. The 2-3 inch wide flowers appear first on top of the tall 6 to 7 \u00a0foot plants,\u00a0and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[707,521,798,665,627,601,630,646,113,455],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1978"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1978"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2010,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1978\/revisions\/2010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}