My sunflowers are dying. What to do?

Question

A few weeks ago I bought a sunflower plant, the ones sold in big hardware stores with one flower that come in a 6" pot. So I moved it to a bigger 12" round pot the day after buying it.

As of today, the flowers have died and the leaves are greenish-brown. Im no expert, but they're not doing well. A small one started to grow , but it's all brown.

I water them every day, but it doesnt seem to help. I live in the Caribbean and they're in my rooftop with very little shade. In terms of temperature, we get 85 to 90-degree heat everyday, so it's horribly hot.

So what can I do? Could it be that it's too hot even for the sunflower?

Thanks.

Answer 1

In that kind of consistent heat, a little shade rigged up for the middle of the day would be helpful, but watering potted plants only once a day isn't enough in such heat either - even in the UK, in full sun and high temperatures (24 deg C or 75 deg F and upwards) twice a day as a minimum is essential. This is especially so after some weeks of growth, because the roots will have filled most of the available potting medium, meaning there's not much soil compared to root, so it can't retain enough moisture to supply the plant for 24 hours. High temperatures and full sun also mean using a tray or outer pot under the plant to trap excess water is, for once, very useful, though its important to note there is no other time when that's the case; I spend a lot of time telling folks not to allow pots to sit in any excess water, but in those conditions, often the planting medium dries out too much and any water applied simply runs out too fast and doesn't get absorbed, so a tray beneath helps with that.

You could try trimming off the dead parts and increase your watering - maybe the plant/s will recover sufficiently to produce more flowers.