It's been a long week of being sick for the @marxrab household. First, my sweet Little Rabbit came down with a fever. I cuddled my two year old all day because she was sick and miserable. Her fever was gone by the next day but mommy caught the bug. It was a weird sickness. I was nauseous and my stomach bothered me. I couldn't stop sweating. I was sweating for days and felt zapped of all energy. Now my husband has it and is down for the next few days til it passes.
As soon as I was feeling well enough to go outside I was pleasantly surprised to see my very first Mammoth sunflower had bloomed.
It was covered in caterpillars!!! Hundreds and hundreds of caterpillars! They were eating it's leaves and destroying all of my sunflowers. I powdered them with diatomaceous earth to try to get rid of the bugs. That's the white powder in the photos.
My first sunflower got too heavy and fell over
These two will bloom fairly soon.
My other two sunflowers are standing tall. You can see the leaves have holes from where the bugs ate them. It's awesome they are so tall. I'm going to go out with measuring tape to measure how tall they are.
They are huge!
I'm feeling a lot better and so is Little Rabbit. It's nice to see my garden still going even though the summer is slowly coming to an end.
Wow! Those things are huge! You didn't get the "Magical Giant Bean Stock" brand, did you?
We had some small sunflowers come up on their own. Nothing like those ones you've got there, though. My parents planted big ones once, when I was a kid, and they had a heck of a time getting the roots and stocks out of the garden plot. I hope you have an easier time of it!
What do you plan on doing with them? Are you going to toast the seeds? Did the powder work for disuading the caterpillars? Poor little caterpillars.... lol
Somehow I missed this one in the feed, which I will blame on my crappy eyesight. Good luck with the gardening!
I picked the ones I'd read got biggest. They are pretty awesome. These three are in my kiddie pool with what is left of my squash and corn plants. I'm going to have a hard time with all kinds of roots when I'm ready to clear. I'll try to harvest some seeds. Maybe for eating or planting next year. The powder worked pretty well. There aren't as many caterpillars. There were hundreds and now I'm only seeing a few.
planting is the best virtue of humans
so keep it up
I am happy both rabbits are feeling a bit better :)
Great to hear about your cute little rabbits :) Kisses
Pretty sunflowers my dear :)
I love sunflowers, in Chicago I sowed them every year. Unfortunately, most of them were destroyed by squirrels. These small rodents climbed on and broke them. However, every year with stubborn maniac I wanted to have them after all ;)
Monster flowers... Wow!
Glad you're both feeling better... ;)
😄😇😄
