Sunflower: comparison

I love sunflowers; i have more than 20 varieties which i grow in succession. But this time it is really disappointing, the plants were tall and wiry with small flower and some have less vibrant colour. The seeds were fresh from the package.

1. velvet queen

Below are my velvet Queen, the flower is not as blackish red as it supposed to be (photo 1), instead it more like rusty red, (2nd photo) and the second plant look almost like bicentenary variety (^{3 rd} photo) The seed that i bought from Vienna produce the deep red colour, the current seeds were sourced from USA.

from supplier website

                                     

velvet queen

?velvet queen

2. Hybrid suflower

 This sunflower was grown from my own open pollinated seed of last year, so it is not a variety named variety. The petals are long and narrow, yellow in colour which is slightly darker near the centre, maybe this ia cross between Taiyo and bicentenary.

3. Kong sunflower
  

Germination rate of this variety is poor, almost the same as giant Mongolian at about 20 %. This is my only plant from this variety. My Kong sunflower instead of 12-14 foot giant only reaches the height of 5 feet and equally smaller flower. I was very busywith other commitment that i do not have time to fertilize it hence the smaller plant, in my opinion regardless of the variety, the plant that was feed with a lot of fertilizer will be bigger and produce bigger flower too.

kong sunflower

  photo :supplier's website

                                         
5. Giant sunflower
This is among my favourite sunflower, the petal is  plum, colour is lighter and the centre is green.

giant sunflower

6. Procut brilliant
   This sunflower is my recent favourite, it has pale yellow petal with dark centre,  almost similar to valentine sunflower sold by other company