Pernille Rahr Maansen lives in the countryside of Northern Jutland – part of Denmark. Pernille has taken part in the project several times, harvesting seeds from the first year, to plant again the next year. Pernille says:
My husbands younger brother and his wife, have had two boys who died because of myotubular myopathy, one right after birth and one lived to be 1 1/2 years old. I learned about the project from my sister in law who had some extra seeds and asked me, in the spring, to grow them and share the pictures. I had both yellow and beautiful red ones. They didn’t grow to be very high, I think the highest was 1.40 metres and the flower not as big as I’ve seen them but they have had several flower heads on each and my yellow flowers flowered into November.
I hadn’t grown sunflowers before and had no clue how to do it best, to get most flowers to grow. So I took the seeds and planted them in pots and put them on my terrace, because it is nice and sunny there in springtime. I think I planted them in late April and then I waited to see the results. I think that 3/4 of the seeds were successful – as they grew bigger I planted them in bigger pots and when they were about 0.5 – 0.8 metres.
The Big Sunflower Project 