Dozens of paddocks planted in bright yellow sunflowers have been drawing visitors to farms throughout Aotearoa this summer.
Whether to help supplement farm incomes or for fundraising, sunflower patches have been drawing large crowds and families in recent weeks.
However, it’s been a challenging season for many sunflower growers.
The Rayner family started the Gladstone Sunflower Patch in Wairarapa three years ago to help fundraise for their son’s hockey team. Last year they raised about $12,000 for the team.
She said they were “well behind” this season, compared to last.
“We’ve had a lot of trouble with getting our patch started this year.
“We’re a little bit later than we usually would be.”
Gates to the sunflower patch opened last weekend, which was later than the family would have hoped, Rayner said.
“We’re just not getting people through the gate, I think because there’s so many sunflower patches around.”
Unfortunately, the season started with cutworm, a type of moth caterpillar that eats young plants and seedlings, and most commonly found in maize crops.
The family re-planted the crop just as conditions across Wairarapa became unusually dry for November and December, followed by non-stop rain.
It was likely to be a short season, only running for another week or two, Rayner said.
But there won’t be any sunflowers going to waste, as they’ll be fed to the cattle, and the ewes and then be rolled back into the soil.
Organisers have been running the Mangamaire Sunflower Field for four years. Photo / Sonya Holm
It was also an early start this year for the team at the Mangamaire Sunflower Field, near Pahīatua.
Owner Abbe Hoare and her partner Emile de Greeuw started the patch four years ago, as a way to help try to slow traffic on their rural road.
The plan backfired, with more motorists now attracted to the area by the bright colourful flower fields, where they can get photos taken by Hoare, a professional photographer.
The pair are now looking to sell the business.
Hoare said it had been a mixed season.
“Every season has definitely had its growing challenges,” she said.
“Even four years in you think we must know it all by now, but unfortunately not.”
Though they had got their flowers in the ground early, they too had been impacted by cutworms: “something I’d never even heard of before,” Hoare said.
But they had still been able to open the season early, and were now readying for their final weekend.
It was also the third growing season for Kerry McCorry, of South Eyre Sunflowers in Canterbury.
The flowers were grown to raise funds for Gumboot Friday and the local community in Oxford, with the seeds donated by the Pure Oil company’s Good Oil team to support the project.
McCorry said they were so far on track to open for Waitangi Weekend, like last year, despite a lack of rain early on and problems with pigeons eating the early seedlings.
“I’m expecting it to be busier than last year, just going from the amount of messages coming through,” McCorry said.
“We are hoping for another successful sunflower season, and that the flowers raise some great fundraising for the charities and local initiatives that we support.”
