Updated: Feb 6, 2023
I am sure as kids most of you would have grown sunflowers, usually amongst your friends or siblings to see who gets the biggest or tallest one in a fun, friendly and environmental competition. Sunflowers are easy to grow plants that can easily dwarf most people by growing on average 6 to 10 feet. Here I will go into facts about sunflower, how to grow them, why you should grow them and my experience with growing them. So whether you want an interesting and unique plant to grow, an environment friendly hobby or just a healthy competition, then please read on.
What is a Sunflower?
Sunflowers botanical name is Helianthus, which has nearly 70 species within it, the most common of which is called Helianthus Annuus that is grown for edible oil and seeds. However, for the back garden as you are probably growing them for their enormous size you might want to pick up sunflowers with the names ‘American Giant’ or ‘Skyscraper’. Getting your hands on sunflower seed is easy and you can obtain some at most garden centre and many other stores also sell them in the spring. As I mentioned above there is a variety of different types, so get one that you like the look of.
Reason to grow sunflowers:
There are many reason why you should grow sunflowers but if you need a little inspiration, here are the most common reasons:
Bees – Sunflowers are a hot spot of nectar and pollen, both crucial in helping the bees.
Ease of growing – They are incredibly easy to get them to sprout and grow making you feel like a successful gardener.
Looks – I think everyone agrees that sunflowers look magnificent & spectacular.
Seeds – Sunflower seeds are a healthy tasty snack, very nutritious and many of your local animals and wildlife will eat them too.
Environmental – Alongside all other plants, sunflower help to reduce the carbon dioxide we omit.
Competition – It can be an incredibly fun competition!
How to grow sunflowers?
Here are the key things you need to know to grow your sunflowers:
When should you plant sunflowers? You should always check your sunflower packet but most are often sown mid-April to end of May. However, this can be started earlier in a green house.
How often should you water your sunflower? These are watered more often than other plants. The soil should be constantly moist. In the height of summer they should be watered daily. However, you may be able to get away with less than this if it rains and remains cool.
How long do sunflowers take to sprout? Usually, they will sprout in 7 to 10 days.
When do you plant sunflowers in the ground? You should plant your sunflower when the first true leaves appear (these are the second set of leaves).
How long do sunflowers take to reach maturity? They can reach maturity in 80 to 120 days.
What conditions do sunflowers need? They need to be put in full sun and well-draining soil, which can be Improved through manure and compost to ensure good growth. As mentioned above ensure they are watered regularly.
Here is my sunflower experience!
I decided to plant some sunflower for a bit of healthy competition with my partner and to see how easy it is to grow them (spoiler: It is incredibly easy) by following the key guide above. Here is my timeline from planting the seeds to a whopping 7 foot sunflower.
25th May: I planted the seeds into small pots with a small amount of stones at the bottom to help with drainage and your standard multi-purpose compost.
1st June: In just 7 days they had already begun to Sprout.
17th June: Even though they are small the sunflower true leaves (Second set) had emerged. This meant they could be repotted but I decided to wait until they were slightly bigger and better established.
23rd June: The sunflowers continued to grow at a rapid rate and their true leaves had fully come in. I then re-potted them into individual larger pots.
2nd July: I dug a large trench at the back of my garden, which was in full sun and put the sunflowers in. Whilst digging up the soil I got rid of as many foreign object as I could and mixed in a bit of multi-purpose compose. Although it is recommended to plant them two feet apart I was a little short of this, due to space and only separated them about a foot apart (Don’t worry they still grew). I then staked them in place with bamboo and twine.
20th July: As the sunflower continued to grow and summer fully came in I de-weeded the area and twined higher up the sunflower and bamboo to ensure they would not collapse.
28th July: The spectacular heads of the sunflowers had started to emerge with one completely flowering. I also continued to de-weeded the area to ensure maximum growth.
10th August: All the sunflowers were flowering.
20th August: All the sunflowers had completely flowered and seemed to reach the end of their life. I decided to leave them for another week to let the bees collect the pollen and nectar.
28th August: The beautiful sunflowers lasted for a little bit longer but today I harvested their heads. I picked of the seed and laid them on the bird table for the birds of course. However, I have seen many people just leave out the whole sunflowers heads or pin it to a wall or post for the birds to peck at. Alternatively, you can dry them out to make a snack for yourself.
Overall, as you can see the sunflowers from seed to harvest was around 90 days, which isn’t that long at all. The reasons you should grow sunflowers are to help the environment, because it is a beautiful plant and provides a fun competition. They grow at considerable speed for plants making growing them visually exciting. The benefits to the bees are tremendous and the seeds are an added bonus for a healthy snack or to feed your local birds. I hope my recommendation and method for growing my sunflowers worked for you and you decide to grow a few of your own. Anyway, I would love to see how tall your sunflowers got, so make sure to send me a picture on my social medias with #growthesun or #sunflowercompetition and tag me in it.
Updated: Feb 6, 2023
Bees are essential to life and are frankly fascinating. They come in a range of colours and sizes but all do something very fundamental ‘Pollination’, which is the transfer of pollen to a stigma, ovule flower or plant allowing it to fertilise. Fertilisation turns the ovules to seeds allowing more wondrous plants to grow. Additionally, to this vital process they propagate, they also produce honey, which as I am sure you know is a delicious, sweet food with many uses. Finally, they are an incredible species that work together in huge colonies for their survival. So if you don’t think bees are vital for our planet survival, form incredible interesting organisation, produce your favourite substance (honey) and are fascinating in many other ways I am not quite sure what your still doing here. However, if you do find bees as fascinating as me and want learn more, here is what I learnt and my experience from a bee keeping taster day.
What is a bee keeping taster day?
A bee keeping taster day is essentially just that. It is a day you can learn about bees in general and the most iconic of which is the honey bee and what it is like to be a beekeeper for a day.
What to expect from a typical taster day?
Now, this is my experience of a beekeeper taster day and the things I learnt. My taster day took part in the back garden of a beekeeper. The garden was a good size but by no means huge and as we sat and had a cup of tea for our introduction there was no bee in sight. I learnt this was because of the way the entrances of the bee hives were oriented away from the house and large hedges acted as barriers that meant bees would be unlikely to fly towards the house. After the briefing and an introduction to bees we got to try on the stereotypical bee gear with our own pair of latex washing up gloves. Yes, latex gloves are an easy way to protect your hands and stop them getting sticky. We then went down to the hives to look at the massive colonies the bees have formed, used the tools (Hive tool) to open up the hive and find the queen bee. It was a great and unique experience, where I did not get stung at all. Throughout the day we were taught lots of fact and information about bees and there care. Here is what I learnt about bees:
What I learnt about bees!
Bees have survived for a long time without the intervention of human help, so surely we don’t need to do anything correct? Wrong, largely due to industrial agricultural, parasites/pathogens and climate change bee’s population are in decline. Due to us contributing to their decline we should be responsible to mitigate and stop this. Through bee keeping bees numbers can increase, as it gives them safe and secure place to live, their colonies to grow and a better chance of survival.
Additionally, I learnt the rough structure of a typical hive, which consists of a elevated platform, the bottom board with entrance, two hive bodies one typically for brood and another for food, a honey super (another body section for the bees to create more honey, the frames to create the cells for honey and brood on to, an inner cover (crown board) and a outer cover (roof). Additionally, a queen excluder can be used to prevent the queen traveling through to the supers and laying brood there.
Usually, a hive will have one queen, which is identified by its longer abdomen but commercially is often highlighted with a non-toxic marker. The queen is raised from larvae selected by the worker bees and only fed royal jelly until sexually mature. The queen larvae will be identified by a queen cup, which is a larger abnormal cell. If queen cups (cells) begin to form it is a sign that the bees might be swarming.
The hive and colony can have as many as 20,000 to 80,000 bees. The majority of these will be worker bees, which are all females. These come from the brood, which means bees larvae. The remaining bees that are male are called drones. The drones don’t have stinger or gather nectar or pollen. Their whole role is to mate with an unfertile queen. If there is no unfertile queen the drone is essentially pointless.
Taking their honey is bad, right? Wrong again, sort of. Bees eat the honey to survive and during the winter when they hibernate they use the honey as a reserve to get them through the colder months. An experienced beekeeper should be able to take the surplus honey they produce and leave enough honey for them to survive over the winter. Additionally, beekeepers can add other sources to the hive to help them, such as a sugar water solution. The amount of honey a beekeeper can obtain from a single hive does differ depending on its size and age but approximately 20 to 60 pounds could be gathered over a year.
What’s the typical hive?
I have mentioned the typical hive layout (structure) above but there are multiple different types that can be used. Here are just a few different types of hives:
British National Hive is one of the most commonly used hives in the UK;
Langstroth Hive is one of the most popular hives around the world named after its designer;
Top-bar hives is a simple hive to make yourself and are relatively affordable. However, It cannot hold as many bees and is not expandable.;
Skep Hives are historical hives that are typically made from wicker and still in use today.
They all have their own advantages and disadvantages that may make them appropriate for you but you should do your research before purchasing one. For many it depends on what hive you used when learning bee keeping.
Flow Hive
The Flow Hive is a hive that was made popular through a crowd funding website. Its unique structure allows the beekeeper to break the plastic cells and tap off the honey without opening up the hive. However, this is not good for the bees, as it will ruin the brood and doesn't allow for properly checking the hive. This can be overcome by not breaking all the cells but may require you to open the hive and take out the frames to see what ones have brood and honey. There is ongoing debates to whether the newest ‘revolutionary’ Flow Hive is good for bee keeping and for bees but this is down to personal preference and experience.
What is swarming?
Swarming is when a queen bee and the majority of bees will go to a different location. There are a number of reasons why bees swarm but it mainly comes down to not having enough space and the bee colony thinking the current queen is not good enough.
Common signs of swarming are:
The colony will have a large number of adult bees ready for the swarm;
The hive will have large amounts of brood (usually, 8+ frames);
The hive will be over populated;
Queen cells will emerge.
Ways to help preventing swarming are:
Give additional brood boxes and hive space to the colony;
Take out queen cells (cups) before additional queens hatch.
There are also three in-depth methods that can be used to control swarming which are:
The Pagden Method
The Snelgrove Method
The Horsely Method
But my introduction course did not go into depth with these. However, it was noted that swarming leads to a weaker colony that may not survive. Additionally, for commercial beekeepers it means that the honey harvest will be poor.
Is bee keeping good?
Well in my opinion yes and this comes down to the threat we pose to bees today. Bee keeping increases the population of bees and gives them a better chance in the winter, controls them swarming and gives them a safe place to grow and thrive. Additionally to this, the increase in population of bees helps the local plant life and agriculture. Having said this, it is dependent on the bee keeper and how the bees are kept and treated through their life to whether this is achieved ethically. For example on my experience no smoker was used when handling the hives, frames and bees.
Overall, beekeeping is a fascinating and unique hobby with a great community with even better benefits if you love honey. If you have an interest in bees and bee keeping I would recommend a beekeeper tasting day to learn and experience what it’s really like keeping bees. Even if you don’t want to become a beekeeper you can still learn a ton about how they are cared for. Additionally, you can still help hundreds of solitary bees in your back garden, so check out my other posts on that.
Updated: Feb 6, 2023
Electric cars are becoming ever more popular, they are getting better looking, sustainable, economical and are clearly becoming the future of automobiles. Even recently, Volvo have announced that they aim to only produce electric cars by 2019. In this post, I have looked through several electric cars available at the moment and their aesthetics, cost and size to pick my favourite cars. I want to make it clear, I have never driven any of these care but are my opinion of the best from their looks, specs and reviews. Anyway, electric cars are not just great because of their sustainability but also economically, as to recharge an electric car is often much cheaper than a petrol or diesel one. Additionally, they have great tax benefits and many options of government grants, as well as being incredibly eco-friendly with little to no omissions. For this reason and more, you should get an electric car and here are my favourites you might want to consider. Although these are all fairly expensive, as any new car is now days, I have primarily looked at cars that will be used by the public and not the most expensive car only affordable to the extremely wealthy. Here are my top picks for electrical cars:
Volkswagen e-Up
The Volkswagen e-Up is a great quick run around electric car packed with a ton of technology crammed in to the a typical clean Volkswagen interior look. It is well spaced, has alloy wheels and achieved good long-range ability for an electric car. Additionally, it has four doors, which is increasingly rare for newer cars.
Number of doors: 4
Starting price approximately: £25,000
Nissan Leaf
The Nissan Leaf is a spacious family hatchback that gives a quiet comfortable ride. It again has great interior with large windows to let tons of light in to ‘emerge you into your driving experience’. It is reliable, as it included a number of safety features, which is a bonus. Lastly, you have the option to upgrade it to have even more gadgets to make it more high tech than the base model.
Number of doors: 4
Starting price approximately: £17,000
Volkswagen e-Golf
The second Volkswagen on this list gives a clean smooth drive but also provides spurts of power to give an excellent drive around the city centre. It has a fairly large battery for an electric car and has the ability to be charged at home from a three-pin connector. It comes with the usual beautiful Golf interior with some added highlights and features in easy to reach location. It is more spacious than other cars on this list, comes with 16inch alloy wheels, simple to use technological features and a brilliant car for its price.
Number of doors: 4
Starting price approximately: £25,000
BMW i3
Now the BMW i3 is on the more luxurious side of electric cars and full of innovation with a unique, easily identifiable look that whizzes through the street with its electric blue accents. It comes with new light weight carbonfibre-reinforces plastic (CFRP) body, has large windscreen and appealing light interior. It has the typical electrical systems from satnav to Bluetooth but also includes heated seats. It has a tons of power and in the case of emergency a backup petrol powered generator to complete this brilliant package.
Number of doors: 2 & two halves
Starting price approximately: £32,000
Renault Zoe
The Renault Zoe is one of the cheapest electric cars on the market. It is a great urban car brilliant for short journeys and running around your local town. It is an easy to use car with a typical appearance for new low budget cars on the streets today. It has good weight when driving and a nice updated interior with a fair number of gadgets including a touchscreen satnav and Bluetooth. Overall it is a quiet, classy, affordable electric care that you can pick up.
Number of doors: 4
Starting price approximately: £15,000+ (depending on model)
Tesla Model S
Tesla the well-known increasingly famous car of the future made by the new technology god, Elon Musk. This is by far the best looking car on the list but also has the price to match. As expected it comes packed with technology and gizmos in the futuristic cockpit of this high-end luxury car. This absolutely stunning car has room for your luggage and for adults to sit in the back, comes with great boosts of speed, brilliant steering and will easily get you notices.
Number of doors: 4
Starting price approximately: £60,000
Tesla Model 3
Another next level creation by Elon Musk but made for the general consumer and made to be mass produced. Here Tesla offer the Model 3. Again this is one of the best looking cars on the list with its sporty sedan look with some cool features, as mentioned above including the great autopilot mode. This is still incredibly stylish and screams modern high tech super car. It has Tesla’s iconic sloping roofline and a nice open window area. This is a bit more affordable than the above but still not the cheapest on the list but it is a Tesla after all.
Number of Doors: 4
Starting price approximately: £35,000
Electric cars are speeding into the fast lane both literally and metaphorically. The electric car industry is currently blooming and with encouragement from many governments is defiantly a strong consideration when buying your next car. Cars are probably the second largest asset you will buy in your life, so you want one that is reliable and future proof. I am incredibly excited to see the future of electric cars and the brilliant inventions that are sure to be coming out soon. We hope that the list above gave you some options for a potential purchase or just to get you thinking of the future of the automobile industry.
