Evelyn McHugh wrote:
It started out simply enough in the summer of 1998. The guy next door
gave me a packet of very old sunflower seeds. I planted them, got three
nice, tall sunflowers. The following summer, I planted some, and noticed
other volunteers. The volunteers were bigger than the parents, so I
saved some seed and decided not to be too careful about cleaning up the
seeds the birdies miss. Year three, no volunteers came up (there was a
drought in 1999), so I planted some of the saved seeds, and get even
bigger, taller sunflowers. A few send up a second or third bud after the
initial flowers.

Fast forward to last year. I get a zillion volunteers, some growing out
of the crack between the edge of the raised bed's wooden boards and the
cement patio. I pull most of them, but leave about a dozen scattered
plants. The tallest eventually get 12-15 feet high - towering over my
trellis, and almost as tall as the peak of my neighbor's garage. They
have one large flower, and after that, develop side buds and branches
that have more large flowers, then taper off into smaller flowers on the
end of each branch. One plant has dozens of large and small flowers, and
I seem to be running the goldfinch feeding station for all of Bergen
County. My elderly neighbor is out there taking pictures for her
scrapbook. I'm taking pictures, too. The plants do have their limits,
tho, because the long branches are weak at their forks where they join
the main stem, and the longer they get, the more likely they break off
under heavy rain or strong wind. A few of the plants also get top heavy
with seed and have to be tied up to the trellis. By Labor Day, my raised
bed looks like the sunflower rain forest, as the poor tomatoes are
growing up overhead between branches in search for the sun. Does not
seem to stop them from producing fruit, and I have to stand on a step
stool to pick it before the frost gets here from the now-dying
sunflowers. Big mess to clean out all those tall things and get the
debris into the recycling barrel!

This year, I again have a lot of volunteers. I transplant or give away
most of them, leaving what seems like a reasonable number in May. Here
it is, July, and I have one plant that is over 8 feet tall, and several
that are over 6 feet. I have been striping the bottom two pairs of
leaves off the plants so that the tomatoes and everything else that is
also thriving will get better light. Bear in mind that this bed is about
three feet wide and twenty feet long, and it's two months before these
things stop growing! When I transplant them, they do not get as tall as
the volunteers I leave in place, but even the row of nine I planted
against the house are at least chest high.

The question is: does anyone think there is a market for these mutants?
Anyone have any idea how to find out? I can save seed (even if I have to
goldfinch-proof a few plants), but I don't have a clue as to what to do
after that. Everyone that has seen them has asked me where I got them or
where I got the seed. The ones that I give away as transplants seem to
do quite well in other places, so it's not just my brown thumb or some
peculiar magic in my yard. Apparently, I've stumbled into some genetic
mutation magic that works!

There are a lot of seed and plant swapping websites out there e.g
www.seedsavers.org, www.gardennut.com, even ebay etc
You could try your hand at selling or swapping them for some more goodies

Conor