From my gardening notes, I see that I try to grow strawflowers about once every 10 years or so, and then I promptly surrender.
Last year it was time to try again. Just like last year, I had limited luck with the flower-to-plant ratio, but the flowers that did bloom were pretty.
I broke my old pattern of waiting another ten years, by trying some strawflowers again this summer. I grew the same cultivar as last year, but I also added a second taller one.
The experiment was a total flop.
Rabbits snapped off and devoured the unprotected plants, but something else chomped on the ones enclosed in a chickenwire fence, which was baffling (An insect? Chipmunks?).
At the same time the protected ones started regrowing, they also began shriveling up (possibly a wilt that developed from our very wet spring). Soon I was left with dead, dried-up flower stalks. Then I was growing zero strawflowers.
I’m not sure if I’m ready to try them for a third year in a row or not. When I consider the mess that just occurred it’s an easy answer—NO! But then I see my photos from 2011:
Perhaps by November when I usually order my flower seeds I’ll have forgotten all my strawflower woes.