Can I grow Black Oil Sunflowers in my garden?

[Mac in Wisco]

We used to throw handfuls of BOSS in the birds' run. One spring my wife planted a bunch of flowers around the circular drive that led to our front door. I decided to mulch them with litter from the run. We ended up with sunflowers popping up all over the place. I let them grow all summer. They grew 3-4 feet tall. We had a strip about three feet wide and 50 feet long that was solid sunflowers. At the end of the season I cut all of the heads, left them on the back porch to dry and filled several plastic totes with them. Throughout the winter I'd just throw a few heads out there each day and the birds would clean them of the seeds.

 

[dragonlair]

Some places sell BOSS that have been treated with a growth inhibitor (Walmart is one of them) so the seeds will not sprout. They should list it on the bag.

I feed BOSS to my horses and goats too. The goats digest them all, the horses do not. I have a nice "garden" in the horse pasture when the BOSS sprouts and grows!

 

[Heathercp]

Well, that settles it. I'll plant some straight out of the bag and put some kind of fine mesh over the flowers when they start getting eaten by the other critters. I wonder if the marauding herds of deer that eat everything else in my garden will make a meal of the sunflowers. The deer are beautiful, and it's not their fault, but they're a plague here.

 

[zephyrcreek]

I think I may plant some out in the compost manure pile in the pasture and let nature takes it's coarse.