And finally for today, an update on the crisis zone which is sunflower number one. His head still sits at an alarming angle, but doesn’t seem to be getting any worse. And even better news is that no less than four additional flowers are on the way! You can see three of them here:

He does look most peculiar - with his listing head now a foot below three new sprouts (the fourth is slightly lower down, just visible in the lower picture). There are also other blooms forming in some of the crevices between the trunk and the leaves - it’ll be interesting to see if any of them flower (most are tiny). Only sunflowers one and two (the ones which have had “issues") have these - three and four each only have the one flower. I presume therefore that trauma at the top can prompt interesting stuff lower down.

The temptation to cut off his head is greater than ever before!

Four is in his prime now. Beautiful thing, with his flower now fully developed. He is however a little saggy in this picture due to it being a hot day. When it’s warm, since they are so large and their pots are so small, they’ll sag unless watered every couple of hours, which is obviously impractical when we’re both at work. Ah well.

Next year I intend to grow them in the ground rather than in pots which straight away eliminates the watering and falling-over problems. Not sure how I’ll keep the slugs off them though!

Having shed most of it’s lovely yellow petals, number two’s flower is reaching the end of it’s natural life, and my thoughts now turn to what to do with him. The Internet, of course, knows all things, and the perceived group wisdom is that I should chop off the heads when the backs of them start to go brown, store it in the garage in a bag (just like with the alliums), and wait for all the seeds to fall out. I shall check this with my Dad when he gets back from Austria.

Number two’s back is not brown, which means I get to put off the inevitable beheading for a bit longer. I have to say that I’m not looking forward to it, however, the passing of the big flower will give the secondary flower a better chance of getting some water, so that’s kind of OK. As you can see here, the secondary bloom on number two is a pretty little thing, even if it does look more of a daisy than a sunflower! Thanks to him not being very heavy he’s not suffered stunted petal growth from resting on a leaf. He therefore uniquely sits proudly undamaged.

This picture shows the whole of our house, and also all of the sunflowers. Bearing in mind that the patio is about a foot lower than the ground floor (there are three steps down to it from the kitchen or the dining room) you can see just how tall these things (especially number four) have got.

I’m extremely pleased!

You can also see how the nasturtiums have clambered all over one of the bushy things (bottom left of the picture) in the rockery! I asked Nancy if this was cause for concern but she thinks the bushy thing will be just fine. The nasturtiums are quite brittle so I’m sure she’s right.

Number one now looks truly bizarre - his trunk has become damaged and lost structural integrity. I fear he may lose his head.

On the other hand, number two is looking glorious (excepting a bit of burn on his top-most petal where he fell against the drainpipe).

Number one listed by 30 degrees at some point this morning, with a full fall onto the patio only prevented by the conveniently-positioned drainpipe until he was righted at lunchtime when Nancy noticed. Unfortunately, additionally to his already rather wonky trunk, he was like that for quite some time and has sustained some damage - three leaves have died and had to be removed (after I took this picture), and also his bud has suffered some browning (although you can’t see it in the photo).

He is rather battle-scarred now.

This is happening because they are so huge in comparison with their pots, which makes them vulnerable to a gust of wind knocking them for six. Not sure how to get around this.

The sunflowers, meanwhile, boosted by a bout of warm weather, are also going completely mad. Number four (on the left here) is now almost at the top of the kitchen window, and is therefore about 7 foot tall. Wow!

(Yes, I know I need to paint the windowsill).

Sunflower four is the one nearest me, furthest from the camera. Oddly, sunflower one, nearest to the camera, looks about eight foot tall due to the perspective of the shot. I can assure you it isn’t though, much as I’d like it to be!

My dad made me slightly jealous by pointing out that a workmate of his had sunflowers that are ten feet tall. But that’s a bloke who works in a garden centre and has experience. It’s certainly something to aim for in the future, but I don’t think I’ve done bad for a beginner. And they are still growing!

• Sunflower One: 125cm
• Sunflower Two: 123cm
• Sunflower Three: 119cm
• Sunflower Four: 117cm

To avoid sunflower one growing into the tomato pot (which is suspended about six feet from the ground from the old basketball hoop mounting) and creating some sort of sentient mutant tomato/sunflower hybrid creature capable of speech, I have re-ordered the sunflowers so that they are in reverse numerical order as you look at them from the garden. This means that number one is now on the right and number four is on the left. This replaces the previous father-son-daughter-mother (1-3-4-2) "family" formation.

Sunflowers one (shown here) and two also now have some beautiful leaf arrangements at their peaks.

Unfortunately it seems that sunflowers one and three have broken free of their bonds at some point today. I tied them back to their sticks, and they still look a bit wobbly, but I think they are going to be OK.

Number three’s leaves are all pointing in odd directions (since I think he was slumped on the floor for quite some time and therefore had to adjust to look at the sun) which makes him look most peculiar. It is reminiscent of the early days when he didn’t know whether to grow up or down.

The nasturtiums meanwhile have taken on a more battle-scarred look after their encounters with snails, slugs and drought. They’re mostly healthy, and contesting competitively for the sun with their neighbours the strawberries.

All looking good, but, even being watered pretty much every day, the nasturtiums are showing signs of being parched. I’m always worried about overwatering them in case I put so much water in that the compost gets washed away and their roots get dislodged. Perhaps I shall visit them twice on the watering round.

The sunflowers are looking spendid - these high-angle shots don’t quite do them justice.

Here are the nasturtiums. Notice that even the floppy looking ones have perked up and are now looking healthy. These pictures were taken at 9pm - so about 3 hours after they lost direct sunlight.

The sunflowers are looking a bit parched though after two days in hot hot sun, and the falling-over incident yesterday.

Two days outside and sunflowers one and three seem to be liking life.

As are two and four.

There are loads of nasturtiums coming up now.

Whilst the sunflowers are looking a bit furry.

An exclusive shot from outside, showing the nasturtiums pressed up against the (paint smeared) window, clamouring for sunshine. The sunflowers today are boring by comparison.

I noticed for the first time a fourth sunflower attempting to live, right in the corner. It’s only a little stubby unhealthy looking thing so I don’t expect it to survive, but I shall give it my full support and encouragement regardless.

Nancy helped me prop up the three sunflowers with some old chopsticks. Note that the trays have been rotated 180 degrees to give the other side some sun, so the weirdo one that wasn’t growing straight is now at the front-left. It has been forcibly stretched out like its brothers and now looks a bit more normal, if a little reluctant.

The sunnys continue to grow well. One and Two are starting to sway a bit and are in need of a supporting stick, whilst Three continues to restlessly churn it’s compost up. Still only three of them though, which is a bit disappointing since I planted eight.

Meanwhile, sturtium One has some well-developed leaves, whilst others are starting to sprout nicely.

The sunflowers have gone green (which makes them look a lot better), and some of the nasturtiums have come up! As you can see I have moved the nasturtiums to the windowsill.

Sunflower three (at the top-right of the lefthand tub here) continues to give cause for concern. After his reburial yesterday he’s kind of all wriggled back above the surface worm-style, rather than growing upwards and nicely in a straight line. Hopefully he will sort himself out - I’ll continue to make sure his white bits are covered with compost as much as possible.

Two of them seem very happy, if rather yellow, but the third one to have popped up seems to be some sort of mutoid sunflower/furry/maggotmonster, and the fourth seems to have come up, decided it didn’t like it in the open air, and then ducked back down undercover ostrich-style. Since the box says to put them in the light when “small shoots appear” I’ve put the sunflowers on the windowsill.

On my Dad’s advice I dug up sunflower three and replanted him, since it seems like I may have planted him upside-down in the first place, hence the weird mutant growth pattern.

No sign of anything happening with the nasturtiums, so they’re still in the pantry in the dark.

Here’s the tub before I started piercing holes in it (as per the instructions)

Then I filled it with compost and stuffed the little nasturtium seeds into it, covering them up as I went

And here’s the other one done, together with it’s drip tray. The drip tray is the bit labelled “DRIP TRAY".

And here is the completed assemblage.

My attention then turned to the sunflower seeds. The one at the top of the packet looked a bit skanky so I didn’t plant that one.

And here they both are, finished