It’s been a bad year for pumpkins but a great year for sunflowers for a local resident who likes to go big in the garden.
Record readers will likely remember Scott Loewen from past years when he’s grown giant pumpkins – and then sailed one in Buntzen Lake, had one carved into Goliath and fed one to a hippo. This year’s plans for a giant gourd were squashed when the pumpkin “aborted” in his garden.
“That happens sometimes,” he said. “That’s what happened to mine this year. I had a late start and bad weather.”
Loewen said some pumpkin growers, including a Sapperton resident who has grown a 900-plus pound pumpkin this year, use a greenhouse at the start of the growing season. (The Record will be following up on that story.)
“As a secondary fun thing, I planted sunflowers hoping to get some giants,” he said. “I went with height this year. Five years ago, I did super big flower heads. That was fun but they weren’t tall; but they were BIG!”
According to Loewen, sunflowers have a “pretty similar regime” as pumpkins.
“They love compost and deep, well-drained soil, lots of water but less fertilizer. I barely used any fertilizer,” he said. “Using the right seed is important.”
Loewen went with Titan seeds for height this year, after using Mongolian Giants for flower head size a few years back. Next year he hopes to try Sunzilla seeds, which he’s been told produce sunflowers that are super tall and have big flowers.
Some of this year’s sunflower plants fell over and broke in the wind, so Loewen staked some of them to keep them standing tall.
“I have about 22 in total,” he said. “Most are over eight feet; a couple over 10 feet,”
Loewen said he has about 15 tall sunflowers growing in his front yard, but the biggest one – a towering 12’8” plant is growing in his back yard.
“Next year I will do a temporary greenhouse for my pumpkin, so I’m looking forward to that,” he said. “But I love sunflowers so I will definitely be trying to beat 12’8.”
