Click on a thumbnail picture below to see the full size version. 39 Entries. Sunday, May 9 View Page I'M BACK and ready to rumble!! The girl and I spent 3 days spreading 960 lbs of pro-mix in the community garden (16, 60 lb cubes)   Sunday, May 9 View Page Soil looking sweet!! - (compared to the crappy sandy soil that the garden here came with)   Sunday, May 9 View Page Plot is tiny... 12 feet x 17 feet (204 Sq ft) I'm ready for the challenge....hoop house looking good, fit with raised walking boards   Sunday, May 9 View Page Just look at that soil.. I wanna roll around in it...must fight the urge   Sunday, May 9 View Page Started 9 of my 836 est... "liberty" if anyone here remembers. She was a 1911 crossed with the 1928. The best 2 go in the garden soon....very soon...   Monday, May 17 View Page Not as green as I like to see.... gimme a couple days to work on that. Otherwise doing good   Wednesday, May 19 View Page Much better looking :)   Wednesday, May 19 View Page Henry.... we are coming for your sunflower record!! P.s...look how cute she is   Sunday, May 23 View Page We chose a keeper the bigger 836 est (1911 x 1928)! (It's 13 days old now and starting to kick into gear a little) also....She's daydreaming about giant sunflowers & stuff right now   Sunday, May 23 View Page Right side up? 4 years and I still mess the diaries up lol   Monday, May 24 View Page 14 days old and cruising   Sunday, June 6 View Page Looking good   Sunday, June 6 View Page Photo for proof lol:   Thursday, June 10 View Page (Yesterday) we layed down at 36" long...stressful   Sunday, June 20 View Page For anyone interested: I'll be joining the trend of posting YouTube videos following my attempt to grow 1,000 lbs in 200 Sq ft. Link: https://youtu.be/ZiD2B6ktQPo Hoping to make about 8 videos this season.   Monday, June 21 View Page 42 days old and really happy with what I see.... minus the splits lol   Wednesday, June 30 View Page Chugging along. Pollinating soon   Wednesday, June 30 View Page Photo for last post   Wednesday, June 30 View Page Got my walking boards set up how I want. • Pollination soon. • Plant is 51 days old.   Saturday, July 10 View Page Stump   Saturday, July 10 View Page Side shot   Saturday, July 10 View Page Pollination a few days ago was a total bust! Way too wet... all my pollen was sticky -> the rest of my males didn't open. Should be pollinating under that white tent here soon...   Sunday, July 11 View Page Visited Henry's patch, invaded it for some pollen....   Monday, July 12 View Page Pollinated this 5 lober today -> hopefully my keeper...implementing the Mike Schmit vine placement method Cross is: 836 *est. Rouse (1911 x 1928) × 1184 Swenson (2051 x 1989) Fruit will have around 80 days to grow, final square footage of the plant will be 234 Sq ft (I'm anal about this stuff)   Monday, July 12 View Page First picture is what produced my 836, the mother of the fruit on the right. This is just a shape comparison   Monday, July 12 View Page Here is my plant as of yesterday, at 62 days since sprouting. We have gotten an absurd amount of rain in the last 2 weeks, hopefully the weather gets better soon as I am not able to feed the way I'd like to.   Tuesday, July 13 View Page New YouTube video for those interested, patch update and pollination details. https://youtu.be/1jXU_pHtNWg   Monday, August 16 View Page Pumpkin is slow and cracking like a mother trucker... sunflower is growing 5-6 inches per day though   Monday, August 30 View Page Going for 18 feet. 3.5-4 feet left. Seed started July 15th.   Monday, August 30 View Page Photo:   Saturday, September 11 View Page Our sunflower is around 18 feet and not blooming yet! Amazing considering the July 15th seed start (the first 2 rounds of sunflowers got killed by animals of some kind)   Saturday, September 11 View Page Here is a photo from Thursday when she tied my personal best of 17 feet 1 inch!   Wednesday, September 22 View Page Sunflower is around 19-20 feet   Thursday, September 23 View Page I can't believe it's still growing!!   Friday, September 24 View Page We got a measurement of 19 feet 7 inches. This means we have likely beaten our state record by 2 feet!! Hopefully we get another 4 inches....   Monday, September 27 View Page We are thankful to God for the opportunity to have this plant, which was a 3rd planting attempt on July 15th. Last good seed from my sunflower last year, a miracle to say the least!   Wednesday, October 6 View Page Front page! The news BUTCHERED the details. We think we hit 20 feet though!   Wednesday, October 13 View Page 20 feet 7 inches with my own seed from last year. Broke my personal best by 3.5 feet!! AND broke the state record of 17 feet 8 inches (set by Henry Swenson)   Wednesday, November 17 View Page So unfortunately we did not get any mature seeds from the state record sunflower. I asked Chris Brown why he thought this was, as last year I only got a handful of mature seeds on my 17 foot sunflower -> most of which got eaten by critters leaving me with only 7 seeds. Chris told me that sunflowers might actually need other sunflowers to pollinate correctly, he has had this same issue. My question becomes: did my sunflower last year pollinate from something random? My neighbors (down the road) had some sunflowers in the 10 foot range and this is the only possible source of pollen I can think of Lots to read, skip through if sunflowers bore you lol