News — sunflower

 The focus at Green Witch Seeds has always been on open pollination and heirloom seeds. In the background we're always playing around with hybrids and attempting localized landrace strains.   When it comes to locally adapted varieties you cant beat land race cultivars. We've had some progeny with a third of the water demands and twice the harvest crossing about a dozen english cultivars with four old coloured North American varieties. One of the most beautiful sunflowers we've developed is a cross between an indeterminate amount of varieties. Its a self sower, resembles mones but with more burgundy hues typically grows...

  There are two constant challenges I come across growing im my arid gardens. The opressive full sun and almost no water.  Mechanical and chemical ways to negate this abound but just planting things that actually thrive in this environment is alot less effort. Its the cheapest and typically leads to more bountiful harvests than the other two options.  Sunflowers are where we'll start, they are ornamental, edible, effective self sowers, cold hardy and fill a space thats typically very hard to fill in dry gardens.  Moving from the back to the middle, I like to fill in this area...