Thursday, May 5th, 2011 at 4:42 AM
Black oil sunflower seeds seem to be everywhere – they are in snack foods, they are in bird seed, and (for some people) they are in the ground, in an effort to grow their own batch of beautiful sunflowers. Here are a few things you will need to know about growing black oil sunflowers if you are hoping to grow a garden of sunflowers to call your own.
There are a couple different reasons why “sunflowers” have the name they have; one reason is because they have a tendency to turn their faces to the sun when they are fully mature, but the other reason is because these flowers require a lot of sun – in fact, they require a minimum of six hours of sun per day!
You should wait until after the last frost of the season before you plant your black oil sunflower seeds, and then you should make sure you are picking a place in your yard where the flowers will be able thrive with enough sunlight to keep them going.
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When you plant the black oil sunflower seeds, plant them far enough into the soil that birds and squirrels will not be able to get to them, as these animals will see black oil sunflower seeds as a tasty treat; a good rule of thumb is to go about a foot into the ground with the black oil sunflower seeds.
You also need to provide an open “growth path” for your black oil sunflowers, which means that there should be no significant dirt clods, rocks, or roots in the path your sunflowers will try to travel from the ground to the air!
After you have raked the surface of the ground flat, you should lay a couple inches of compost over the ground and work it down deep into the soil, and then you can rake the ground flat again, start watering the area daily, and wait for your beautiful black oil sunflowers to spring up from the ground!
