Simple joy in growing your own sunflowers in Accra

I've shared a few blogs on sunflower seeds but today I'll talk about the sunflowers themselves. Since I collect a lot of the seeds and even have them as snacks, it's obvious I've tried to plant some myself. It's a joy to do something this beautiful but in depends on where you are. I'm living in Accra and the weather is someway these days. Very unpredictable but mostly hot.

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If you're going to grow sunflowers in Accra then expect to be dealing with some nasty heat before 8 in the morning, it stays on, especially in this season where it shines so bright like as if it's already noon. You will find that the soil in your container dries out fast, you put your finger into the soil and by midday it’s already starting to crunch away from the sides.

You can water early in the morning before the sun is overhead and again when it cools off in the evening when the air still has the faint smell of wet earth and whatever the city is burning, usually some kind of solid wood. People have not stopped burning stuff in my area, it's 2026 and this still happens even in residential areas.

These sunflowers get real tall, that seems good until they start to lean. Whenever possible, you support the stalks of the plant with whatever you can, a stick, a piece of wire or the handle of something broken. There’s a difference between how you imagined it would turn out compared to what you have to do, which is crouching over a container in your yard with your sunflower attached to a piece of old broken furniture.

But the heads do open, they are big and flat and yellow, they have a rough or sandy feel to them if you slide your thumb over them. And yes, they move through the course of the day with respect to the sun, that is, their face moves throughout the day.

You can’t see them moving as it happens, only after an hour of time passes that you can look and see that they have reoriented wherever they are pointing, simply because the entire weight of their head has changed and you cannot see how it happened or how fast.

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