We planted sunflower seeds on April 24, Russian Mammoth from Seeds of Change. After waiting a few weeks, the germination looked weak, so I planted more seeds on May 14. Now in both sunflower patches, we have two big 5-week old plants, and a bunch of 2-week old seedlings. I think I’ll thin them down to two of each and see what happens. Time to bloom is around 110 days, so we can look forward to seeing them in bloom around mid-August.
Sunflowers made the cut in our "all vegetable" garden because the seeds are, after all, edible and delicious. More than likely though, the birds will get them all. No problem – birds eat the bad bugs, too. We like birds.