Building the sunflower field was hard won! When we first moved in, it was nothing but overgrown grass, brambles, bittersweet, and burdock. So much burdock and all of it wedged in tight, unyielding soil you would have thought it was cement. But, like your sister-in-law’s terribly behaved wild child, this backyard patch had been doing what it wanted, blazingly.
Building a sunflower field
Like reigning in a wild child, you must first fix their diet – take away the sugar. Or sun, in this case. So I ordered a giant, black plastic tarp from amazon. The first step would be to solarize the soil. Soil solarization is a nonchemical method for controlling soilborne pests using high temperatures produced by capturing radiant energy from the sun. The idea is to kill the stubborn greenery and the top layer of weed seeds. I asked my husband to get the weeds as short as possible, and then we laid the tarp out and weighed it down with big rocks. Typically, you only need six-eight weeks.
Burdock – my other nemesis
Because the land was so wild – we left the tarp in place for an entire season. Amazingly, some burdocks survived, and a few plants poked their way through the tarp. Can you believe that? When I inspected them, I found that most burdocks were still alive. So I had to dig them up the hard way. The thing is, burdock has a VERY long, skinny, shockingly strong root tap. Eventually, I found a system of loosening the soil around where I thought the taproot was, and then with the final shovel shove, I could pop it out. Talk about satisfying! I dug up about 30 of those suckers.
Preparing the soil
Once all the major lumps and bumps were removed, I asked my son to use the tractor again to rake over the soil so I could look for any hidden weeds I’d missed. I picked out those last couple of troublemakers and then raked the soil smooth and picked out rocks as I went. So.many.rocks!
Planting sunflowers – finally!
With the soil reasonably weed and rock free, loosened up, and raked through, it was finally time to plant. I used a stick to drag shallow lines through the soil and planted a couple of packets of sunflower seeds. As I neared the end second packet of seeds, I remembered I wanted to succession sow the sunflowers for a more consistent supply. So I broke up the remaining space into even squares. Then, every week, I’d come out and plant another square.
Garden critters
This year was the first year with a sunflower patch, so the critters have not figured it out, although the deer did get a little nibble the week we were away. I’m guessing we (and the dogs) were away, and they could venture a little closer to the garden. I suspect next year I will need to be more careful planting and protecting the seeds as I have in the past with a row cover, so they have a chance to sprout. The other option would be to start the sunflowers under lights and plant out at two weeks old (much later, and their roots don’t adapt to the transplanting), but that soil would be challenging. I’ll need a few years to improve and loosen that soil before I can easily plant seedlings.
Sunflowers
All in all, building a sunflower field was a success. I planted five varieties and have narrowed them down to varieties I’d use again or not. Although pretty, the branching sunflowers were unwieldy at best and unfortunately turned into a shade producer for a shorter variety next to them.
If you’ve used soil solarization did you have success with it?
~ Lola
“There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments!”
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