My sunflower crop

Okay, it's just a row in my garden. I wish there was a market for sunflowers close by, they seem to do really well here. The dry and heat don't slow them down, and I have not ever seen any bugs hurt them. Any sunflower growers on here?
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I never have,but the local elevator teamed up with a local grower for a few years and there were a lot of them around here.
 
Neat! Is that a year-a round can on a D19? My dad
had one on a one-seventy. Pretty cool to feel like
I'm in the cab again.
 
I have been around the 72s for years and have one. Have never seen one modified like that . The three bat reel seems to be working. I have seen milo fingers but never those snouts you have on that one. Seems to work good. I have raised the sunflower and combined them but hard to get them dry enough before the birds eat them around here.
 
Nice crop. I've tried to grow them like that but the deer clip off the seedlings as soon as they pop up. In the pastures there must be enough other stuff to distract them.
 
I planted around 5 acres of them last year, they did real good. Except until they started getting ripe and drying out. I couldn't keep the birds out of them. Every time I'd go check on them, the flocks of birds seemed to darken the skies. Knew it wasn't going to yield anything, there wass nothing there, but ran the combine around the field 5 or 6 rounds and got a handful of sunflower seeds. Really, one handful. I was gonna just try to sell them at a roadside stand if they worked out. I planted maybe a couple acres along the roadsides near our farm just fornlooks this year. I had all sorts of people stopping and taking pictures in and by the ones I planted last year.
 
I planted between a half acre and acre, in two food plots this year. Been busy, went back to check on them a few days ago. There were a lot of forked stalks, all eaten off by the deer about waist high. Ruined the whole shooting match.

There is very little I can plant in the line of food plots that they will not destroy immediately. We kill as many as we can, but seems like about 10 deer will ruin a lot of stuff.

Gene
 
Do you have braces under those flower pans? One of them seemed to flex quite a bit watching. I put some pans on a 9600 back in the early 90's when cutting some flowers in NE one year. They had a brace that went under the pans from about the point where they started to taper to the bottom of the head for support.
 
I have planted an acre of Sunflowers for the last two years just for fun. Not doing as well this year as they did last year. No spring, went directly from winter to summer with not much rain and didn't help that I planted late.

I use a two row Deere planter with a commercial large striped seed on one side and black oil bird seed on the other. The bird seed blooms first then a few weeks later the large plants bloom.
 
I made the sunflower pans out of 14ga metal. Just a small brace underneath in the rear of them.
The deer and turkeys certainly take their share. You have to plant enough to give them theirs and have some left over for harvest. Deer start eating them as soon as they come up and continue till you harvest whatever is left. I used to have turkeys by the hundreds but something wiped them out and they are just starting to come back again in numbers.
 

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