The Rural Voice, 1981-02, Page 8Sunflowers, they follow the sun
Sunflower culture used
BY YVONNE REYNOLDS
When Thomas Gray wrote "Full many
a flower is born to blush unseen and
waste its sweetness on the desert air", he
was obviously not referring to the
spectacular sunflower. A fieldful of these
bold beauties is a stunning sight,
irresistibly turning human heads to gaze
at huge golden flowers, some measuring
up to a foot in diameter, following the sun
in its daily journey across the summer
sky.
Ken Gascho's seven -acre field of
to be commonplace in the Goderich-Bayfield area years ago
sunflowers on the south side of Highway
84 west of Zurich was a traffic -stopper
this year while the crop was in full bloom.
Mr. Gascho has been growing sun-
flowers for birdseed for more than 20
years, and recalls that three decades ago
sunflower culture was commonplace in
the Goderich-Bayfield area. His glowing
memory of a 100 -acre farm devoted to
sunflowers has not dimmed with the
passing years. He began his longlasting
relationship with sunflowers when he
Using an ancient corn Sheller. Ken Gascho dehusks thousands of pounds of
[Photo by Reynolds]
popping corn.
PG. 6 THE RURAL VOICE/FEBRUARY 1981
bought a package of Mennonite -variety
seeds from Tobes, a long -vanished St.
Catharines seed house, and planted a few
rows in the vegetable garden. His reward
was a bushel of seed. Each year he saved
some of the seed, and planted more the
next spring. Mr. Gascho is still using the
same Mennonite seed.
"It's open pollinated, and I haven't
found a good substitute yet", he says.
"The cost of planting is very low if you
have your own seed.
The seeds are planted with a seed drill,
the same as beans, 10 to 12 pounds to the
acre (depending on the size of the seed)
with rows 28" apart, and scuffled two or
three times. Under ideal growing
conditions the plants can shoot up six to
eight inches in a week, and sometimes
can only be scuffled twice.
"They are a real good weed control in
the early growing stages, and they shade
out the twitch and other weeds", Mr.
Gascho states with authority.
He uses no herbicides on any of his
crops. Sunflowers are especially sus-
ceptible to 2-4 D, and can be damaged
just by the fumes drifting from trucks
spraying the weeds at the sides of the
roads.
Mr. Gascho cautions that sunflowers
are strictly a rotation crop, and should not
be grown in the same field two years in a
now. They don't need an especially good
soil, as their tremendous root system
draws nutrients from deep in the subsoil.
"They're not called sunflowers for
nothing", Ken Gascho says admiringly.
"They always lean toward the sun, face
east in the morning and gradually twist to
the west. As the heads get heavier and
the stalks drier, they stay facing east."
By the end of October or the first weeks
in November, when the moisture content
is no more than nine per cent, the plants
are ready to be harvesed. Mr. Gascho
built a special attachment for the front of
his combine to pick up and feed into the
header any of the top-heavy stalks the
reel has knocked down. Resembling a
picket fence angled at 45 degrees, the
attachment consists of sharpened hard -
wood sticks.
"It's lasted 15 years, cost me a day's
labour, some wood, a few nails and a bit
of wire", he says with justifiable pride,
"and is easy to repair."
If a picket breaks off, he simply
sharpens another piece of hardwood. If