If you have decided to try growing sunflowers as food, there are a few things that you should keep in mind. Types of Sunflowers. Other types of sunflowers include the California Royal Sunflower, which has a burgundy (red + purple) flower head.. The soil should be slightly acidic and a bit alkaline, with a pH of 6 to 7.5. Sunflower plants grow best in sandy or loamy or clayish type, moist, fertile, but well-drained soil. Here are 15 beautiful types of Sunflowers for you to grow from classic to unusual types. But you must avoid soggy or waterlogged soils at any cost. Do you love Sunflowers like we do? Tom has been breeding sunflowers for 30 years and has revolutionized the market by introducing a dazzling array of new sunflower forms and colors to the seed trade. There are lots of beautiful.. The sunflower (Helianthus annuus) is a living annual plant in the family Asteraceae, with a large flower head (capitulum).The stem of the flower can grow up to 3 metres tall, with a flower head that can be 30 cm wide. The attractive heads of flowers are 7.5–15 cm wide in wild specimens and often 30 cm or more in cultivated types. Sunflowers (Helianthus annuus) is an annual plant with a large daisy-like flower face.Its scientific name comes from the Greek words helios (“sun”) and anthos (“flower”).The flowers come in many colors (yellow, red, orange, maroon, brown) but they are commonly bright yellow with brown centers that ripen into heavy heads filled with seeds. Sunflower seeds are rich in vitamins, proteins, and minerals, as well as linoleic acid which helps the body metabolize fats properly. You can develop the soil by digging out a patch of ground about 3 feet in width and 2 feet deep to assure that the soil is not jam-packed. To learn the secret of growing sunflowers to record-breaking sizes and heights, I turned to Dr. Tom Heaton, the world's foremost sunflower breeder and Renee's Garden sunflower seed supplier. Choose the right kind when growing sunflowers for food. Linoleic oil is the original sunflower oil and until the NuSun variety was developed, it has been the most common type of sunflower oil. First, you need to choose the right kind of sunflower to grow. Linoleic is a polyunsaturated (65%) oil and is also high in vitamin E. This type of oil contains linoleic acid (an omega-6 acid) and is one of two essentially fatty acids our bodies need from food sources. Sunflowers (Helianthus spp.) Furthermore, sunflower seeds contain about twice the iron and potassium and about 4 times the phosphorus of beef. They contain about 24 to 27 percent protein, only slightly less than an equal weight of ground beef. The common sunflower (H. annuus) is an annual herb with a rough hairy stem 1–4.5 metres (3–15 feet) high and broad, coarsely toothed, rough leaves 7.5–30 cm (3–12 inches) long arranged in spirals.