I mentioned in an earlier post that Chris and I have an upcoming wedding! September 10th, actually. This has changed up the garden plans slightly, as I would like to grow most of the flowers for our wedding.
It’s a fall wedding, and will take place outside, so sunflowers are fitting. We’ve had good luck with sunflowers in the past, and I think we can add some daisies to the mix.
Here are a few pictures of the smaller sunflower varieties we grew last year. The yellow flowers are dwarf varieties, Sunny Smile, from Johnny’s Selected Seeds. They produced beautiful 6″ flowers, with dark centers. The orange variety escapes me now; it was a random sunflower packet I picked up at Bachman’s last spring. They were pretty, but not too productive.
I ordered 6 new cutting varieties, along with Sunny Smile and some of the standard 12-foot sunflowers from Johnny’s Selected Seeds. We haven’t grown these yet, so I don’t have pictures… these are from Johnny’s website/seed catalog:
Varieties we’re trying for the wedding:
- Moulin Rouge – 3″-4″ blooms
- Sunbright – 4″ – 6″ blooms
- Autumn Beauty – Assorted sunflowers, up to 8″ blooms
- Little Becka – High producing plants. I think these are smaller flowers.
- Sunny – 5.5″ – 6.5″ blooms; a tall variety
- Velvet Queen – 5″ blooms (look similar to Moulin Rouge, but larger flowers)
- Sunny Smile – 3″ – 8″ blooms, with smaller branching flowers
I’ll update on the progress of these flowers over the summer. I am hoping that succession planting through Mid-July will yield enough for the wedding this September. We’ll just have to see!
