Kitchen Garden Forum

Last year, I grew Cosmos and Sunflowers, both for garden and allotment. The sunflowers...I forget which variety, the ones with several heads on one plant, stated 48" tall on the seed packet. They grew to well over 6 feet in our garden and allotment, the tallest was 10 feet!

The Cosmos was the dwarf variety, 18" tall....they ended up 5 feet tall and got in the way of everything else...though they were stunning.

I had seeded Hesperis, Sweet Rocket and duly planted it out at the front of the border last September, expecting it to be 18" tall like it said on the packet. This spring I was mystified by these huge triffids which I didn't recognise. ( and I had forgotten about the Hesperis) I thought they were weeds...throwbacks from the bird table....but decided to wait and see what they were before pulling them out. They are now over 5 feet tall and are the Hesperis...they obviously got the wrong seeds in the packet on this one!

I am assuming the wrong seeds were in the packets of Cosmos but I have not come across the tall sunflowers with multi flowering heads, so I don't know what happened there!
Did anyone else have oversized plants last year? Any explanations or ideas?

I had exactly the same problem with Cosmos a couple of years ago. They were supposed to be smallish ones to fit in my planting scheme for the border and they ended up like trees and totally swamped everything else they must have been over 6ft high as I couldn't reach the tops of them.

Mutant Cosmos - triffids?

Dear Elaine, sounds like you are doing something rather special with your soil....

Do Peas ever grow anywhere near the height on the packet?