It's one of the best times of year for flower lovers, as sunflower fields bloom across the country. AccuWeather's Emmy Victor explains how farmers are feeling relieved after navigating weather challenges.
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00:00 I'm here at Von Bergen's Country Market,
00:02 a popular sunflower field in the Midwest.
00:05 Every spring they plant 14 fields
00:07 of flowers one week at a time,
00:09 so the flowers can bloom from now
00:11 through October.
00:12 Hundreds of people have already
00:13 come by to check them out.
00:15 While the sunflowers are tall and healthy now,
00:18 I'm told it isn't always easy
00:20 to get them to that point.
00:21 Mike Von Bergen,
00:22 who owns this farm,
00:23 says the weather was extremely dry this spring.
00:27 Thanks to some timely rain in July,
00:29 it didn't take too much of a
00:31 toll on the sunflowers.
00:32 Sunflowers don't require a lot of rain.
00:34 They they predominantly grow a lot of
00:36 these sunflowers in North and South Dakota,
00:38 so they're only getting like a 15
00:40 inch annual rainfall up there.
00:42 We're here.
00:43 We're getting 30 plus inches normally,
00:45 so they do very well.
00:46 Dry Von Bergen says he did notice
00:49 his first field bloomed a week
00:51 later than normal this year,
00:52 and he believes smoky skies from
00:54 Canadian wildfires may have played
00:56 a role in the delay,
00:57 but now many fields are blooming
00:59 across the country,
01:00 so his recommendation to anyone
01:02 visiting a sunflower field is to
01:03 be weather aware where comfortable
01:05 shoes in case it's muddy from
01:07 recent rainfall and if it's going
01:09 to be hot drink plenty of water as
01:11 there may not be a lot of places
01:13 to catch some shade reporting
01:14 for Accuweather. I'm Emmy Victor.