Sunflowers on the Street

Sunflowers on the Street Project

If you found a "Sunflower on the Street" coffee cup, here's the story.

May 1st is International Sunflower Guerrilla Gardening Day. It's when a day when guerrilla gardeners around the world plant sunflowers in their neighborhoods, typically in neglected public places such as tree pits, shabby flower beds and bare roadside verges. If you missed it this year, don't worry, Wildroutes got some down for you. Keep an eye out around Limerick's planters and flower beds.

Wildroutes always loves seeing things reused and recycled. These coffee cups were found on the streets of Limerick (if you start looking, they're everywhere) and, with a few modifications, have become ideal pots for starting seeds, and all for free.

If you come across a 'Sunflower on the Street' coffee cup then please pick it up and give it a new home. These are Russian Giant sunflowers and, if given the right conditions can grow up to 8 feet tall. But they'll need some care and love. Sunflowers need plenty of watering and sunlight, taking approximately 90 days to fully grow.

Care Info

You can plant your Sunflower outside in the garden or in a flower pot.

Remove your sunflower from the Wildroutes pot.
Gently place it in a pre-dug hole in a sunny position in the garden or large pot filled with compost. Be careful not to distrub the roots.
Pack soil or compost around the plant making sure it is secure and water it well. Rich soil is important when growing giant varieties.
As your sunflower grows taller, it may need to be staked until it gets stronger.
Water your sunflower regularly, once a week or more if it's particularly dry conditions.
If the wind or the snails don't get it, you should see flowers within 80 days. It will stay in bloom for a few weeks.
You can harvest the seeds in the Autumn.

We Love Sunflowers!

Ok, so sunflowers are not native to Ireland, they're originally from the Americas and only got as far as us in the 16th century. But what's not to love about them? There are over 60 varieties of sunflowers ranging in size from the Sunzillas that can grow to 20 feet tall to the smaller Irish Eyes which rarely reach 30cm. They come in colours ranging from silvery white through yellows, oranges to burgundy.
Here's some sunflower facts, just in case you didn't love them enough already:

The sunflower is often used as a symbol of green ideology.
During the late 19th century, the flower was used as the symbol of the Aesthetic Movement.
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the tallest sunflower ever grown was in 1986 to a height of 25ft 5.5 inches (776 cm).
Sunflowers can be processed into a peanut butter alternative, sunbutter.
The head of the sunflower, often erroneously referred to as a flower, consists of 1000 - 2000 individual flowers. The petals surrounding the head are ray flowers.
Sunflowers can be used to extract toxic ingredients from soil, such as lead, arsenic and uranium.

Look, I could go on and on but one of the best reasons to grow sunflowers in the city from an ecoloigical point of view is that they are high pollinators and therefore bees love them. Along with this, the seeds are a tasty meal for many of the city's inhabitants, including us humans.

Harvesting Sunflower Seeds

If the birds and squirrels haven't already made a meal of your plant, you can try this.
Harvest sunflower seeds after the flower begins to die back and most, if not all, of the petals have fallen off. Pull out a seed and open it to see if it is full. If it's not, the plant needs longer to mature, if it is, cut off the head, leaving a few inches of stalk. Hang the stalks to dry in a well ventilated area. Do not stack them in a box, as mold can develop during the drying process. As soon as the flowers have dried, extract the seeds by rubbing two flower heads together. They should come off of the flower head fairly easily.
Alternatively, you can leave the dried flower heads on your bird table over winter as a free, biodegradable bird feeder.