We just started ours last night and are also in 5b! (Illinois). We are a tad late, but I think it's alright. Hopefully we can plant them the weekend of May 15th.

Linda Your original message takes me back to the first year I moved here and there wasnt even much grass in the yard as yet. Anyway as I was standing in my yard in comes this hummer and circled my head , maybe my red hat attracted him. I went straight out and bought my first feeder and hung it. Previously to that I was wondering if I was going to have hummers, question answered. From there it was a matter of building up what hummer habitat I could in my small lot size yard. Last summer had evolved to my best hummer summer ever. During august migration was at its peak and I was blessed with around 40 hummers. So here I am living in a subdivion of small lots and it can be done, it just takes time.

you're probably fine starting some, you wouldn't want to plant for 3-4 more weeks yet. And there are plenty of people who would be happy to share if you ask around (I live an hour west of Dayton if you get this far south) or a small nursery (not a big box store) near you will probably sell a 6-pack even of heirlooms for 2-3 dollars.

You can sow them forever. The DTMs on the packages are estimates only and I have found many varieties flower much earlier here in our heat than the DTMs indicate. (This is true of many other kinds of annual flowers, herbs and veggies too.) I've sown sunflower seeds as late as early August and had flowers in the fall before frost. In a good year with adequate rainfall my sunflowers will form seeds, the seeds will fall to the ground and a few weeks later the seeds will germinate and give you a new round of plants. In addition to the sunflower seeds I plant, we have a couple of kinds of native sunflowers, including Maximilian's sunflower and they grow fine with no help from me. I don't even water them. Sunflowers are about the easiest thing on earth to grow. Sadly, deer will eat them....the flower while it is in bloom or after it has formed but not yet opened, the seed head, leaves, stems, etc., so how many sunflowers we have in bloom in any given year will depend on how hungry the deer are.