Onida farmer seeing weevil pressure in sunflowers; Recent heat helping rate of maturity speed up

Onida, SD, farmer Ryan Olson told the National Sunflower Association that his sunflowers look fairly good this year.

Olson said the red seed weevil was as bad or worse than in the past, but he had no disease issues. He said initially his sunflowers were behind in maturity, but with recent temperatures in the 90’s -100’s, they are catching up. They’ve started blooming and dropping petals.

Olson hopes to start harvesting the second week of October.