Hello,
I'll tell you the story behind my accidental sunflower. I use mixed grain to feed the chooks: sunflower, sorghum, wheat and cracked corn. It was time to replant the lucerne patch (also for the chooks), so finally I found somewhere that would sell just one kg of lucerne seed, and we used chook manure from the cages to renew the soil. As the lucerne grew, so too did about 30 weeds, so I pulled out 29 and kept one to identify it. It was a sunflower. The odd thing was, wheat grew up in one small garden bed which also contained chook yard soil, and sorgum separately in another. I am now waiting to find a patch of cracked corn growing. Somehow the "mixed" grain became "separate" grain!
Anyway, I see a heap of bees licking that single sunflower, so now I am going to plant sunflower seeds all over the garden. In this climate, I'm thinking they might grow all year round. So my question is, are sunflowers a good thing to plant for bees? Do they make good honey? Do they contain good amounts of pollen? How long does a sunflower plant last?
Lone