I learned a neat gardening trick at the Huntington Ranch this weekend:
1. Grow tall sunflowers.
2. Harvest the heads but don’t cut down the stalk.
3. Use the decapitated stalk as a trellis for beans, peas etc.
Depending on your climate, they could last a couple of seasons. As simple as lather, rinse repeat.
Great tip!
d’OH! I have put my stalks on the compost. Perhaps I can just bury the ends when I plant things next year. I was planning to use them as tomato stakes, but I could also lash them crosswise to other stakes or something. I just didn’t want to put tomatoes where the sunflowers were, but maybe I can rotate crops next time.
You can also use the stalks as a fluffy fill for life jackets. That’s what they used to use before there was foam.
I saved and dried some of the leaves, because I heard you can smoke them (like an herbal smoke mix) and I could make gifts for friends who smoke. But now I learn you can also make a tea out of them to cure diarrhea.
Awesome! And here we’ve just been using them as light sabers!
I leave mine up, too. Last year they were use as solar lamp-posts, for the moveable solar lights we were putting up along pathways in the yard.
That’s a good tip if I can remember it!
Great idea!!
Good tip. I am not sure ours get as sturdy as the ones in the picture but it is worth a try.
FYI they were a mammoth variety of some kind. And I tugged on them–very sturdy and deeply rooted down in nice healthy soil.
HA! We left several in the garden this year for next year to see if it might work! Glad to see I’m not the only one!!!
Wish I had read this yesterday! I just cut ours down this afternoon!
At least they are still whole. Maybe we can dry them and weave them
into a trellis for next year. Thanks for the idea.
Wondering: Is there any such thing as sunflower fiber? I heard that hemp stalks can be left out to ‘rot’ and the fiber that remains afterwards can be woven into string. Any similar fiber in sunflower stalks?
Don’t know anything about sunflower fiber, but they also make for a good carbon source for the compost pile.
heh…we used them for kindling.
I’d be careful with using too much “fresh” sunflower material where other plants are trying to grow, because they’re known to be allelopathic.
fieldguidetohummingbirds–thanks for the info. Will have to look into that!
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