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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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Plant · P-886
Mexican Sunflower
Tithonia diversifolia
Mexican Sunflower is grown for its cut foliage rather than any harvest off the plant itself - it wants regular heavy pruning and regrows fast enough to yield around 60 tonnes of green material per hectare a year as mulch, fertilizer and livestock fodder. Despite a daisy-family habit that scavenges phosphorus from the soil and returns it in the cut leaves, it does not actually fix nitrogen. The leaves make a protein-rich feed for cattle and sheep, but pigs tolerate only a small share of it in their ration and poultry should get almost none. Left uncut it flowers, seeds prolifically, and roots wherever a stem touches the ground, so a regular cutting schedule is what keeps it from spreading into open ground.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 10–12
- Soil
- Sand · Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Dry · Moist
Vertical layer
Shrub- Soil pH
- 6–7.5
- Plant type
- Perennial
- Mature height
- 5.9–15 ft
- Mature spread
- 3.3 ft
- Plant spacing
- 8–12 ft
- Root type
- Stolon
- Spread pattern
- Both
Keep exploring
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Ocimum kilimandscharicum
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Annatto
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Barbados Cherry
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Cactus Pad
Opuntia ficus-indica
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Calliandra
Calliandra houstoniana
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The deeper layer
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- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
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- Byproduct
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Behind the record
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