Our 2025 Sunflower Season

A little background on this season and how we grow sunflowers. We field grow our flowers without any irrigation, so we really have to rely on Mother Nature when it comes to watering our sunflowers especially during the period after seed germination and before bloom time.

Our rainfall in Meadows during winter was below average and has basically been non-existent in spring and early summer.

According to a recent ABC news article “South Australian farmers have grappled with a series of uncontrollable weather conditions that have created one of the most challenging seasons on record” and much of the state (SA), has experienced some of the driest years on record.

We are so very lucky here at Atkins Farm to have 2 fields of sunflowers this season out of the 5 that we planted at the start of spring. There are 3 fields where seed hasn’t germinated at all or where flowers have grown to pencil height and then died. We have over seeded and over planted to try and get some flowers to grow so that we could open this January. Granted, the flowers are not as tall as the previous summer, but we’ve just had no rain like we did last growing season.

We are proud of what we have achieved even though there has been some heartbreak along the way. Yes, the flowers are smaller, but they are just as beautiful, and we are hoping to open our second field of sunflowers sometime in the coming week for picking.

Most importantly though we are proud to be part of the farming community here in the Adelaide Hills and in SA. We won’t be put off by the challenges that we’ve faced this season and we will hopefully start our planning for summer 2026 once this season comes to a close.