A huge sunflower blooms in Manning

Posted

Mike Denny bought a sunflower seed as a gift for his mother earlier this year.

Nita Denny had been watching her sunflower grow from a seedling after her son planted it in her garden. Monday morning was the first day she noticed it in full bloom.

“I checked on it every day to watch for the bloom to open,” she said. “I made sure it got enough water, and Monday was the first day I noticed that the sunflower had opened all the way up.”

“I was tickled to death to see it open up,” she said. “It was such a gift to see that great, tall thing open. I don’t like a fancy garden. I just love to see things grow in it.”

Sharing space in the garden where the sunflower sits are fennel plants and other perennials. She said that a friend had given her the fennel to go in her garden. After they grew to a certain height, she enjoyed watching the butterflies flutter around the plants.

“Butterflies like to lay their eggs on fennel,” she said. “They lay their eggs on the plant and when the eggs hatch, the little caterpillars eat the leaves they hatched on. 

“I chose all the perennials that grows in my garden many years ago, and they still come back each year,” she said. “It’s not as orderly as it was when I first started the garden 40 years ago, though. In the winter there is nothing out there, it’s so bare and dismal. You would think that there was nothing planted.”

“As soon as summer comes, the Lord just sends all these beautiful plants again,” Denny added. “Everything in my garden has its own special time to bloom. It’s like there’s a time clock for everything. The herbs are so much more potent than the dried ones we buy from the store and they smell so much better.”

Denny’s tip to gardeners is a rooting bucket; she said that’s the best way to root your plants for your garden. Starting off with a plastic bucket, cut a small round hole on the side. Put a layer of rocks all the way up to two-thirds of the pot, then put sand in the bucket. Place the cutting to be rooted in the bucket, and the results are amazing and quick. Place a small PVC pipe in the bucket on the rocks. Keep putting water in the pipe and that will pull the roots to root your cutting quickly. 

Denny said that her favorite potted plant is called “Scarborough Fair,” which she named after a song she loves to sing. She planted the perennials in the pot according to the song: parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme.