Sunflowers

Over the past month or so I've been preparing a field on one of the ridgetops at Chaplin Bend to plant sunflowers for a dove field.  On May 4 I was able to get the seeds planted, racing to beat a thunderstorm that was bearing down on me.

I planted two varieties of sunflower seed that day.  The larger part of the field I planted with Clearfield sunflowers, a special hybrid designed to be resistant to Beyond herbicide (think of Roundup-ready Corn, but these are Beyond-ready Sunflowers).  Around the edges and at the far end of the field I planted just some regular Peredovik sunflowers.

Because I was racing the rain, I was not able to cover the seeds as well as I would have liked.  I planted them in rows with my seeder and cultipacked the field, but there were still lots of seeds just laying on the surface of the ground, where the birds had easy access to them. The good news is that it rained hard within an hour of the seed being planted.

As of last week, the Clearfield sunflowers were coming up great, having germinated and moved along to the four-leaf stage:

The Peredovik seed, on the other hand, had produced next to nothing--the edges and the far end are nearly bare.  Did all of that seed get eaten by birds?  Or was it bad seed?

To address the problem, On Thursday May 17 I re-disced the edges and far end of the field and replanted them.  At the far end I planted a pound or so of wildlife mix (sunflowers, millet, corn, a little of this, a little of that) that my friend Brandon Campbell from NRCS had given me.  Around the edges I planted the Peredovik seed that had been left over from the first planting.  This time, after I planted I lightly disced the field again to cover the seed a bit.  Here's hoping that this time the seed will germinate.

But we need rain!