Looking for a stunning addition to your home landscape, or an amazing pop in your home decor? The cherry-red petals of the Cherry Rose Sunflower tipped in lemony yellow, have you covered.
This hybrid sunflower has been around for a decade, and in addition to its remarkable color palette, has made a name for itself in both fast growth and size.
Read on to learn more about this sunflower, including how to incorporate it into your yard and how to use it to decorate your home.
Characteristics of the Cherry Rose Sunflower
If you want some idea of what the Cherry Rose sunflower will look like in your home landscape, and later as a cut-flower display in your home, think of a more cherry-colored version of the Royal Flush variety.
But you should also expect to see some significant variation amid individual flowers in the Cherry Rose variety. For instance, some of the flowers may display blooms comprised almost entirely of the deep red hue that gives the variety its name, with just a hint of the yellow that defines most blooms.
Some aficionados of this sunflower sing its praises by noting that it seems to radiate a sort of glow as if it is being backlit by a night light, with its colors brilliantly shining into the surrounding air.
Growing Your Own Cherry Rose Sunflowers
There aren’t a lot of secrets regarding how to best grow the Cherry Rose Sunflower, which can be cultivated across the United States, and if well-tended, can reach as high as 6 feet.
First, you should plant seeds only after all danger of frost is past, placing them a half-inch deep in the soil, and at least 6 inches apart. If you’re eager to get your sunflowers planted, you can start them indoors before the first frost in two-inch pots or in plastic cell packs before moving them outside.
Once your sunflower plants are in the ground where you want them, you should thin them out of their initial 6-inch placement, allowing for a foot to 18 inches between the plants.
For optimum growth, sunflowers — as their name clearly suggests — require full sun. Additionally, your new crops of Cherry Rose sunflowers will do best in moist soil.
You should see blooms on your Cherry Rose sunflowers within 40 days, and the abundant flowers will stick around for another 50 days, on plants 2 to 3 feet wide. If you already have yellow sunflowers in your landscape, the Cherry Rose will provide a striking color contrast to liven up your yard.
Where to Buy Cherry Rose Sunflower Seeds
You can find seeds for the Cherry Rose sunflower online at Amazon. Sunflower varieties similar in appearance to the Cherry Rose, like Autumn Beauty and Red Sun, are online at True Leaf Market.
And, as always, you can check with your local nursery, garden supply store, or home center to see if Cherry Rose sunflowers are available anywhere close to you.
Caring for Cherry Rose Sunflowers
Sunflowers will respond to fertilization, with a variety of concentrations all the way from 3-4-3 to 15-30-15 — the numbers are a reference to the concentration of nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium, in that order — in the blend. Among the fertilizers, you might want to apply to your Cherry Rose sunflowers is a 4-3-2 blend.
Pests
As attractive as they are to all of us, sunflowers like the Cherry Rose sunflower also are attractive to a variety of pests, including aphids, which are small insects that invade leaves, stems, and flower petals; cutworms, which attack the plants at ground level, and sunflower beetles, which eat into leaves.
Controlling aphids is best done with insecticidal soap, while cutworm infestation can be forestalled by spreading a layer of diatomaceous earth around seedlings, and sunflower beetles can be attacked with neem, an insecticide derived from the neem tree, native to India and Southeast Asia.
Diseases
A good thing about sunflower plants like the Cherry Rose is that they are very hardy and resistant to disease. They will occasionally exhibit signs of leaf spot diseases and powdery mildew, but the most common problem for sunflowers is white mold.
White mold can cause root rot, leaf wilting, and other issues, which backyard growers can work to prevent by proper watering and rotating the spots in which sunflowers are planted.
Pruning
The Cherry Rose sunflower is among the fastest-growing varieties of what is already a fast-growing plant species. But because it is an annual plant, meaning that it dies with the first killing frost, there is no need to prune it while it is growing.
You will, though, want to remove dead leaves from your Cherry Rose sunflowers during the growing season, because they can provide a home for pests and diseases.
Using Cherry Rose Sunflowers as Home Decor
The Cherry Rose sunflower makes a great indoor cut flower to add a splash of vibrant color to your living space because it is among the sunflower varieties specially produced to be pollen-free.
What that means is that you won’t have to deal with any pollen dust dropping onto the table or counter or wherever you might have this sunflower on display.
And as an added bonus, this sunflower is a great choice for indoor display because its lack of pollen means that even people with allergies can enjoy an attractive display of cut flowers.
In terms of tips for optimizing the indoor display of your cut sunflowers, you should place the stems in cold water for four hours or more before moving them into the vase you’ve chosen.
Also, trim off any dried leaves as you cut the stems to about six inches long before placing them in your vase, again filled with cold water. As a final tip, add a teaspoon of sugar to every quart of water in the vase to keep your sunflowers looking great for as long as possible.
Wrapping up the Cherry Rose Sunflower
We hope this post has been an entertaining and informative introduction to the Cherry Rose Sunflower and maybe has gotten you thinking about including them in your home landscape or using them in your home decor. Check out our sunflower page to keep learning about sunflowers!