PlOTTing and planting: sunflowers

It's no secret... I love (not like) LOVE sunflowers!!!  So of course I planted them in my garden.  If you'll recall Ott, E and I gave out packets of sunflower seeds at our wedding as party favors so I planted some of them each year....of course that's only been two years, but you get the picture.

Did you know sunflowers are technically a weed?  They are!  This got me to thinking (bear with me here for a minute).  I work very hard to get grass to grow in my yard.  I fertilize it and water it, I apply other things to keep the dandelion and crab grass down, but as soon as grass grows in my garden, I pull it up and treat it like a weed.  It's not a weed, but I don't want it growing my my garden.  I do want sunflowers to grow in my garden, so I plant and encourage them to grow.  Every now and then I see sunflowers growing along the edge of a corn field.  A farmer does not want sunflowers to grow in his cornfield.  They are a weed to him because they are not supposed to be growing there; the corn is.  So he sprays them or chops them down, no different than I would treat the grass that grows in my garden.  Does this bother me?  No, because I realize he is trying to grow corn and sunflowers could keep sunlight and nutrients from getting to the corn plants and I realize that corn is tastier to eat than my sunflowers.

Ironic?  No, not really.  I was just trying to prove a point that we are all trying to raise something; whether it's grass in our yard, flowers in our garden or corn in a field and we have to make decisions on what to weed out and what to keep in order to be productive.  Deep thoughts I know but something I wanted to share.     

This post was linked to:
Garden Party Tuesday, Bloomin' Tuesday and Fertilize Friday