Sunflower Garden Math

Yesterday we headed out to the sunflower garden to record the height of our sunflowers in addition to the diameter of the flower heads. I had the kids make a data chart based on the information we wanted to collect and we headed outdoors.

The final result- they have all bloomed at this point.

The Soraya variety

The Mammoth Grey Stripes win the tall prize. These are the ones with the sunflower seeds we eat.

The Moulan Rouge did not fare well in all the rain we've had from hurricanes and tropical storms. I guess the roots were not deep enough to support the plant in the poor weather and with the saturated ground.

Measuring the diameter of the flower- seed head and petals

Our tallest plant is 8 feet tall.

We lost one Moulan Rouge plant within the very first week to...something. We replanted the following week with what we thought was the Autumn Variety. Surprise! It was really the Pro-Cut Lemon.

This was a great math activity for J6- just writing numbers and recording data. The older kids will be doing some conversions from inches to feet. We use the portable drawing boards from Discount School Supply.

Honeybee visitors! How exciting! Go bees go!

More height measurments

Rll's data and some petals from the ground- she is taking a Flower Pressing class at Co-op this semester. More on this later.

Our sunflower garden was a 4-H project. In fact, we are members of the Heritage Garden Club and last spring we went to a "training" on growing our seeds. The seeds were given to us as part of the group and we even won a copy of the Sunflower Book. Any day now, the 4-H educators will be coming out to measure our sunflowers. We didn't plant any giants this year (because we planted so late and did imagine with its growing season that it would be tall enough before the first frost), but the growing season wasn't super kind this year and word on the street is that a lot of other families had trouble with critters and their gardens did not do too well. So, I guess we have a shot at the tallest plant.

This was a very successful and enjoyable garden to grow! We are already planning next year's sunflower garden. I'd like to see which varieties the birds really enjoy. We are part of a pilot program with our local science center and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Part of our job is to add and element to our habitat that will help the birds.