Saving sunflower seeds

My niece gave Emma about 6 sunflower seeds two summers ago. She planted 2 in her garden last year but we didn't get a chance to save any. Sometime before planting season this last summer the package got tipped and we lost all but two. So she planted those two in this years garden. One nearly got eaten to the ground by the earwigs - nasties! but it must have loved her because it fought back and grew beautiful flowers for her!



A volunteer cherry tomato plant grew right inbetween them and I helped it vine up their thick stems. (I couldn't find the neat picture I took) It worked so well that I am planning on doing it that way with my garden next year!

Anyway we saved the seed from just one of the plants. It is called a poly-headed sunflower because of all of the flowers on just one plant. As you can see one (my favorite) grew gorgeous rust colored flowers. The one that nearly got eaten grew bright sunny yellow blooms. But it didn't grow as many or for as long - perhaps because it had such a rough start? But my sister and I thought it was very interesting that only one color (yellow or red) grew on each plant and want to experiment and see if that was an anomaly or always the case. And do you only get red from red plants or some red, some yellow? She saved some from her yellow bloom plants for me and we'll see what we get next year!!