I looked out my window the other day at my garden and saw my sunflower plants waving back and forth. My first thought was that is odd, why are they moving like that? I knew we had deer problems but I never dreamed that the squirrels eating sunflower plants would be a problem! But sure enough there was a squirrel at the top of one of my beautiful sunflowers trying to eat as many seeds as he could. He also seemed to be going after the newly budded flowers. Maybe squirrels consider the small newly formed flowers a delicacy.
These are not the huge sunflowers. They are the smaller ones called Autumn Beauty. I plant them for the birds to eat the seeds. And believe me, when they are blooming the American Goldfinches are very busy out there!
Squirrels Eating Sunflower Plants-More Than One Problem
Ok… so, I thought less flowers, less seeds for the birds and less beauty for us! I could live with that. But then I see the squirrel at the very top of one of the plants. The plants are top heavy anyway because the flowers are heavy. And all of a sudden the squirrel and the sunflower plant are on the ground. The sunflower stalk actually broke a little bit. It didn’t fully crack in half but it was cracked. Other sunflowers were leaning over, but none had broken. And there were at least 10 beautiful flowers at the top all growing in different stages. I did not want to lose this beautiful plant.
Sunflowers Bring Pollinators and Beautiful Birds
The American Goldfinches love eating these sunflowers. So I decided I would try to save this beautiful sunflower plant with lots of flowers growing at the top of it. Autumn Beauty sunflowers come in lots of colors, yellow as you can see in the squirrel picture! See the picture on the left of a goldfinch eating a burnt orange sunflower from this seed packet. You can see why I would like to save this plant because of all these beautiful bird visitors! If you would like to order these seeds click on the link below. See my next post for info on how I saved this sunflower plant. Here is a youtube video on how to protect your sunflower.
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