Sunflower seedlings

We planted sunflower seeds at the same time as this post and they also showed some interesting growth. After 4 days, the sunflower seeds have sprouted. Sunflower seeds are big so the seedlings are also big the moment they sprouted. It was fun to watch as you can see how it grows even without macro lenses.

We were using a potting mix that's best for seedlings and they were quite light so I guess the seedlings didn't really struggle much with emerging.

It was a good thing we searched first how to plant sunflower seeds cos you can see that we planted them on the right side. If it pointed the other way, it would have struggled to reach the top and come out since it would have to go over or something. With the right side planted, it just shoot up straight away. :D

The next day after the above pictures were taken, they already looked like this! The leaves were really big compared to the tomatoes lol and they opened up so fast.

We were still kinda worried the birds would get them but they didn't touch anything. So they were just growing there peacefully.

Look at this thing...

After two days, it looked like this already. :D The seed shell was still attached and it gave an interesting shot lol.

The rest of them still looked like this. There were two different types of sunflowers here - one that would grow up to 4 feet and one that's tiny one (maybe 1 foot max). I obviously wouldn't be able to tell by now since I didn't take pics with the labels haha.

8 days after the last photo, one looked like this. I think this was the one that's supposed to grow tall.

And the other one looked like this. The rest just died and sadly these guys died too shortly after this. :<

I don't know exactly what happened but I can only guess. Since we planted them in the tiny pots, I didn't think we would need to transplant them into bigger pots yet so we left them here. The rest of the zinnias and some tomatoes died too and I think it has something to do with the sudden change of the season.

When we planted these, it was mostly cloudy... then all of a sudden it just became so sunny that the leaves were burning. It went up to 39°C the other day and since they were in the balcony, they get a lot of really harsh sun at certain times of the day. What I did when I noticed that it became too hot was that I kept on transferring them to areas with shade, making sure they still get a bit of direct sun. But I don't know, they still died anyway.

Same thing happened with the rest of the seedlings, you can see they've become so dried up despite getting watered everyday. We still have yet to buy a garden net to filter out those harsh sunlight but we have to figure out how to install them since we don't really want to drill or make poles here since this isn't our place. It's just the weather changed so freaking fast that the care stuff I learned a few weeks ago is now entirely different haha.

We might also need to spray some neem oil or some other pesticide but I have to research first what exactly to spray or when to spray them as some seedlings that survived aren't that big yet. Maybe fertilizers too and a bigger pot when they grow a bit bigger.

I guess we just have to wait til we get a garden net installed before planting new ones.