Battle of the Sunflowers

And the afore-mentioned Miracle-gro sunflower. Or as my friend (The Dark Lord) put it, my flower on steroids. You can see the other guy grown in last year's dirt on the right. Both had a layer of compost as mulch - although I don't know if I would do that again in containers. Even though it helped keep down weeds and helped keep my plants hydrated on really hot days - I think that it promoted a lot of bugs. Some of my plants (and the lower leaves of my sunflowers) got eaten by some bug I never saw. I doused my plants (the non-edible ones) with warm soapy water a couple of times, and that seemed to do the trick. Either that or the drop in temperature ;)