From windowsill to skyscraper.

Sunflowers are named honestly: find the sunniest patch you have, six to eight hours of direct light or more. Giants also appreciate a wind break (a fence line, a house wall a few feet away) because a fifteen-foot plant is a sail in a July thunderstorm.

Soil matters less than sun, but loosen it a foot deep and work in a few inches of compost if you can. Good drainage beats rich dirt. No yard? A 15-gallon container (or a five-gallon bucket with drainage holes) in full sun will still raise an eight-footer.

You don't have to start indoors, giants actually love being sown straight into the ground, but growing your seedling on a windowsill in March is half the fun, especially for kids. The trick is a deep pot: sunflowers drive one long taproot first, and they sulk if it's disturbed. Use tall peat or paper pots you can plant whole, pot and all.

One seed per pot, half an inch deep, water, and keep it warm and bright. Only start three or four weeks before you plan to plant outside; an overgrown windowsill sunflower transplants worse than a young one. The week before moving day, set the pots outside a few hours a day so the seedlings toughen up.

Chasing the leaderboard? Sow your contest plant straight in the ground instead: an undisturbed taproot is worth real feet of height.

Birmingham's average last frost lands right around April 3, so April is go time. Direct sowing: poke seeds an inch deep, six inches apart, water, then thin ruthlessly until your best giant stands alone with 18 to 24 inches of elbow room. Wider spacing means taller plants and bigger heads; crowded sunflowers stay polite and short.

Transplanting your windowsill starts: dig a hole, tear the bottom off the biodegradable pot so the taproot can escape, set it in with the rim buried, and firm the soil. Never pull a sunflower out of its pot by the stem, the taproot holds a grudge. Plant three for every one you want; birds, squirrels, and bad luck take a tax.

Missed April? Sunflowers sown as late as June still bloom by September in Alabama.

The taproot is your friend: water deeply once or twice a week rather than a little every day, and the roots will chase the moisture down and anchor your giant. A couple of inches of mulch keeps Alabama's August from baking the roots.

If you added compost, you barely need to feed. Otherwise: nitrogen while it's all leaves (fish emulsion works), then switch to a bloom fertilizer the moment the bud shows. Serious contenders get the record-chaser trick: a shallow watering moat a foot and a half out from the stem, fed weekly.

Every Birmingham summer schedules at least one thunderstorm audition. Beat it: when your contender hits waist height, sink an eight-foot stake a foot or more into the ground a few inches from the stem, and tie loosely with something soft (old t-shirt strips, garden tape) every foot and a half as it climbs.

Tie in loose figure-eights so the stem can still sway and thicken. A sunflower that never moves grows a weak stem; you're its spotter, not its cage.

The dangerous weeks are the first three. Birds and squirrels will dig fresh-planted seeds and snip baby sprouts, so cover new plantings with netting, an upside-down berry basket, or a milk-jug cloche until the plants are shin-high. A cardboard tube collar (toilet paper roll, pushed an inch into the soil) stops cutworms cold.

After that, sunflowers mostly defend themselves. Slugs chew leaves in wet spells and deer will taste-test in the outer suburbs, but a shin-high sunflower in June is already winning.

Giants planted in April crown in mid-to-late summer, right on time for Measuring Days: soil to the tip of the head, standing natural, tape verified by the crew. (For scale: the world record is 35 feet 9 inches, set in Indiana in 2025, the first time an American has held it. Our family record is fifteen feet. Start climbing.)

For seeds, wait until the show is over: the head droops, the back turns from green to yellow-brown, and the seeds fatten up in their stripes. Birds know this schedule too, so tie a mesh or tulle bag over your best head while it ripens (mesh, not paper, in our humidity). Cut with a foot of stem, hang it somewhere dry and airy for a week or two, then rub the seeds free. Save the biggest from your tallest, that's next season's free seed pack, and bring the rest to the Harvest Party for roasting.

The whole second act, from the roasting recipe to bird feeders to turning stalks into homes for native bees, lives in the harvest handbook.