Specialty Gardening: Planting sunflowers in containers, 1 by toofewanimals

toofewanimals wrote:
DM, Your right about the potato vines being for the warmer zones. I used to buy new ones each year, but at $5 each, I cringed at the price. So in fall of 2005 I had a try at overwintering one along with my cannas. It worked.
I put all the cannas and the potato (it really looks like a potato) in a pot and filled it with peat, thinking I would water it everyonce in a while. I put it near my seed growing area so I would remember to water it. Well, after a while I found out my bad boy cat was watering the pot ... peeing in it! The pot never smelled, that surprised me! I just left it there, and I think the plants processed the urea. Most of them lived and grew once I planted them. He he, when spring came, I put the pot outside for a couple of rainy days to help wash the urine out, then watered the kabeegees out of it, put on gloves and got the canna and potato vine and washed them. LOL No, I'm not doing the same thing this year, this year the pot is in a closet!

There are purple and light green potato vines. Last year I put a purple potato vine in the front pots. Looked fine with the other flowers, but after looking at this picture, I think I like the green potato vine with the purple sunflowers.

No, I've never put the potato vine in with the sunflowers. The potato tuber is big and I know the sunflower roots get huge, I just think one of them would suffer. It may be a 'go' if you use a larger pot.

I do wintersow some of my sunflowers. I usually start these 3 inside because they go in the front of the house, but I try to grow at least 3 more for the back garden and those I WS.

Oh, another thing is, I keep the sunflowers in the back of the house till they bloom, then I bring them to the front of the house. The smaller pot makes it easier to move them.

Here is what is usually blooming along with the sunflowers, but on the other side of the door.
My Rose of Sharon.