2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
Today, when sunflower oil is not in short supply and is relatively inexpensive, hardly anyone would come up with an idea to grow sunflowers in the country for the sake of squeezing oil from seeds. But to decorate the site, it is worth planting a few seeds to please yourself with sunny golden sunflower hats
Sun flower of the family Astroceae
It never occurred to me that a sunflower is a huge aster with an edible core. But this is exactly the case. Moreover, his elegant hat all day turns "face" to the sun, accompanying his gaze from the East to the West, for which the plant received such a name.
Homeland of the sunflower
A sunflower came to us from America, where it was cultivated as early as the third millennium BC. The Indians deified the flower, comparing it to the Sun. This did not prevent them from using the ground grains for food, making cakes from them and eating them raw. They knew how to get oil from seeds, which they not only took inside, but also rubbed their body and hair.
Sunflower oil
In Europe, the sunflower, brought from America by Spanish seafarers, first served as a decoration for gardens. Only at the beginning of the eighteenth century did they begin to squeeze oil out of it. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the industrial production of sunflower oil began in Russia, which became popular because it was not banned during the days of religious fasting.
Sunflower medicinal properties
A slender handsome man is useful to people not only with his oily seeds, but also with all his parts, from roots to tops, according to folk medicine:
* The flower is an excellent honey plant, and everyone knows about the benefits of honey.
* Draft-dried young leaves are powdered and added to tea. This tea is said to be good for cleansing blood vessels.
* Alcohol (vodka) tincture is made from the sun's rays-petals, which helps with colds.
* The roots harvested after the fruit is ripe help remove stones from the kidneys.
Sunflower varieties
* The Mammoth Sunflower has the most delicious seeds.
* The two-meter "Autumn Beauty" will delight you with its inflorescences reaching fifteen centimeters in diameter and evoking an autumn mood with their red-brown petals.
* "Sunbeam" will be a good addition to the flower bouquet. Its 12-centimeter-diameter caps are decorated with asymmetrical long petals, and the core is bright yellow.
* Miniature (up to one meter high) "Plush Sunflower" can decorate a country flower garden.
* A perennial variety of sunflower - a plant named "Jerusalem artichoke" or "Earthen pear", the root crop of which is edible.
Growing conditions
Sunflower is an unpretentious plant, but it will not give up on loose, organic soil with neutral acidity. Loves good watering, but does not tolerate stagnant water. He loves the sun, but does not respect the wind.
Resistant to pests. But, nevertheless, sometimes it is damaged by sunflower moth, sunflower barbel and sunflower thorn-beetle. The worst enemy is a flowering plant named "broomrape", parasitizing on the roots of sunflower.
Since the plant is very tall, it is recommended to plant it on the north side along the fence so that it does not block the sun of its neighbors with its powerful burdock leaves.
If you want to get seeds by autumn, the side flowers must be removed.
If necessary, you can make supports for the stem so that it is not broken by the wind.
ATTENTION
Sunflower should not be planted among potatoes. The experience of meticulous German gardeners has shown that a sunflower growing next to a potato has a depressing effect on it.
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