How to Grow Sunflowers with Kids

This page may contain affiliate links. Learn More.

Why not grow sunflowers with kids? Sunflowers are gorgeous, draw pollinators, look gorgeous, make food for birds, and are edible. You just need a few sunflower seeds, a patch of dirt, and plenty of water and sunshine to grow a great sunflower garden. It’s a great addition to any children’s garden.

Learning how to garden with kids just takes a few small steps to be successful. It’s not as difficult as you might think, even for the youngest children.

Growing sunflowers

We grow quite a few sunflowers at Little Sprouts. We like growing the biggest ones we can find. My Little Sprouts LOVE growing things that are the biggest or the tiniest.  We ran out of time and money in the expansion for trellising materials, so we grew several rows of sunflowers for our drying beans to trellis on. It’s the perfect garden activity for preschool.

Since we tried this technique, we have learned that sunflowers inhibit the growth of a lot of other plants, so it’s a good idea to grow them separately. A cool thing a sunflower garden does is remove heavy metals from the soil. So if you are gardening in an urban area that may be contaminated, grow sunflowers the first year for safer soil. 

How to grow sunflowers

Growing a sunflower garden is fairly simple. You need good, loose soil and access to water. They like a lot of sun, so make sure your space has 8 hours of direct sunlight per day.

Poke a hole in your soil up to your first knuckle. Place a sunflower seed in the hole and cover it. Pat it down no harder than you would rub your eye. Water well and keep moist until it sprouts.

Sunflowers are drought tolerant once they are established and they tolerate extreme heat very well. Plant your seeds in the sunflower garden at least 6 inches apart.

Growing sunflowers with children

Different types of sunflowers will grow different heights. They are all pretty tall though, at least 4 feet for most varieties. 

Our largest sunflower ended up bein