Seeds Of Plenty Seeds Of Sorrow

[Odon Irving]

Everythingyou need is on the site, including images, descriptions and valuable information on how, when and where to plant and care for the seeds. We either grow our own seeds or source from the best suppliers across Australia and Overseas. Our full colour seed packets are hermetically sealed for freshness and we offer a two year guarantee on all of our seeds.

The summer I was finishing my book on heirloom gardens, a volunteer sunflower grew in my kitchen garden. Seed dropped by a chickadee from a nearby feeder, it grew with a vigor unmatched by any sunflower grown from a seed packet. It was a reminder that seeds are free. By late summer, the 10-foot tall stem towered above me, and the seed head grew heavier each day and nodding towards the earth. (see Instagram post) From a single seed, over 500 seeds formed. Plenty to share with friends and the birds.

Researchers cleaning up the Fukushima site in Japan put sunflowers to the test when scientists discovered that sunflowers can pull radioactive contaminants out of the soil. The idea was tried back in the mid-1990s near the Chernobyl power plant meltdown. Breathing deeply, I trust that sunflowers will not be grown for this purpose in Ukraine or anywhere else in the world.

Last year I grew Selma Suns and Evening Sun. But we need more, especially since sunflowers represent the Ukraine. I'd love to try American Giant, Ms. Mars and Sweet Smiles. I'm not sure I can name a favorite. I'll just need to keep trying out different varieties -- they're all lovely!

It\u2019s been hard to know what to write these past 10 days, immersed in the news and the sorrow that is deeply felt around the world. Last week, when I learned that sunflowers are the national flower of Ukraine, it seemed okay to share a few synchronized photos of a sunflower that grew in my garden last year.

Sunflowers are a symbol of peace, a source of food, and a gift from nature. Because photos speak more than words, I\u2019ve added only a short narrative. Sunflowers are easy to grow, add late summer color and provide nourishment for our senses on many levels. Let the power of a sunflower opening each day communicate a sense of solidarity around the world.

For the first years as a new gardener, it was all about finding the tallest sunflowers. The Giant Gray Stripe (Helianthus annuus) sunflowers which children love, make the ideal playhouse set inside a family garden. Inspired by Sharon Lovejoy\u2019s book, Sunflower Houses, the huge flower heads grow up to 14 inches across, made up of many tiny flowers each turning individually into seeds.

Pollenless sunflowers are great for cut flower growers since the pollen won\u2019t shed when set in an arrangement. Yet bad for pollinators. Bees need pollen for protein and to feed their larvae. Plant breeders consider this progress, yet I say NO to messing with the environment in this way. To support the common eastern bumblebee and the European honeybee, plant only open-pollinated sunflower varieties.

Heirloom sunflowers are open-pollinated, and every year I plant Lemon Gem, Autumn Beauty, Evening Sun, Ring of Fire, and Arikara. Last year, marauding chipmunks ruined every attempt to grow from seed, so I\u2019ve doubled up my efforts this year and ordered two packets of each. Sources include Fruition Seed and Seed Savers Exchange. Another bonus of heirlooms, you can save your own seed from year to year.

Sunflowers bring us beauty, peace and the power to heal. This week, I\u2019m offering a free seed packet of sunflower seeds from my garden to yours. Subscribe, or simply send me a note. Tell me about your favorite sunflowers in the comments.

They\u2019re high in the neighbour\u2019s dead tree, or on a telegraph pole; anywhere they can look down on the hedges. They\u2019re here for the baby sparrows, the young blackbirds and other small birds. And I don\u2019t like it.

I\u2019m in the garden checking on the four fruit hanging on the dwarf apricot. It might not sound like much, but they are the first that the pollinators have worked their magic to create. I\u2019m not naive enough to imagine the fruit will cling for the summer -the tree\u2019s young years will find them too much of a burden even for so few - but it means next year carries a racing chance that midsummer will bring apricots.

I grew apricots back at the farm. While they lack the lush succulence of a peach that leaves the tree without persuasion, a fresh apricot - plucked after a day of sunshine on its back - has a rich buttery intensity that lifts the soul. So, even in this small garden, I can\u2019t not find space for a single, self fertile, dwarf apricot tree. These few fruit mean it is slowly putting down roots, fuelled by the occasional liquid feed and a great deal of hope.

This morning is one of small jobs, easily overlooked. As well as dreaming of apricots to come, I\u2019m cutting back the chives (their flowers are going over, the leaves becoming coarse), twisting off sweet cicely seeds before they darken and become tough, sieving and simmering the mugolio that\u2019s been quietly fermenting this last month, and whatever else guilts me into being done.

Sitting with a coffee, still for a few moments, I remember reading that magpies mate for life. Hence, I guess, \u2018one for sorrow, two for joy\u2019. Maybe that explains why they\u2019re here most often in even numbers at the moment - joy, boy, gold - one of each couple searches for food for them both, while the other keeps Dixie.

Every day when I go to the garden, I can see what the bindweed is capable of, how opportunistic it is, how relentless. It treats seedlings like scaffolding, as if they were placed for its convenience. It threatens to smother the yellow squash that my garden neighbor, Roger, started and shared; the beans that have come up surprisingly late this year; the potatoes, some of which are just beginning to flower; even the sunflowers, which are growing fast too and seem determined to rise above it all, as if they know that their thriving will create shade that deprives the bindweed of the sun it seeks.

\u201CWeed\u201D is obviously an anthropocentric term, an epithet used to describe plants that grow where we don\u2019t want them. In that context, the purslane and the dandelion are only sometimes weeds in my plots; I often leave them alone, they\u2019re edible, and the story I tell myself is that I\u2019m going to pick them for salads. Usually I let the clover grow too; the community garden\u2019s soil isn\u2019t rich, and I hope the clover will help improve it. The ragweed, which will torture those who suffer from seasonal allergies: unquestionably a weed. The field bindweed: Doesn\u2019t the name tell you what you need to know? It\u2019s my nemesis this season.

My community-garden plot is technically two half-plots. The half-plot to the east, shaded for much of the morning and therefore undesirable to many gardeners, is the space I\u2019ve tended for three growing seasons now. The half-plot to the west is new to me. Last year, someone else grew tomatoes, sunflowers, and gladioli there; I might have seen her once, but I got to witness the beauty of her handiwork all season long.

When that gardener decided not to return this year, I was asked if I might like to have this half-plot too. Now, in all, I have a bit more than 600 square feet under my care. Within that space, there\u2019s such variation: different levels of shade at different times of day, different textures to the soil, different bugs and pests and weeds and volunteers. And it\u2019s in this new-to-me half-plot that I\u2019ve become acquainted with the field bindweed, also known as devil\u2019s guts.

Bare ground is the bindweed\u2019s delight. A cousin of morning glory and a native of Eurasia, it\u2019s believed to have arrived in the U.S. centuries ago, its seeds having infiltrated a packet of seeds brought by a settler. Now it\u2019s everywhere. It takes eager advantage of open space and thrives even in relatively poor soil, quickly forming a densely woven carpet of vine and leaf. Mulching can help. Last year, I was pretty disciplined about spreading wood chips. But this year, I surrendered to the pre-weariness I felt at the mere thought of carting wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of mulch. Now I\u2019m paying the penalty.

If the bindweed is annoying in visible ways, it\u2019s even more pernicious in the places I can\u2019t see. It produces and emits chemicals that inhibit the germination of other seeds in its vicinity. And it subdues what else manages to grow with the help of its extensive root structure, which greedily absorbs water and nutrients below the surface.

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