NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Sunflowers at a local farm have bloomed early amid a heat wave in Davidson County.
For the agritourism industry in Tennessee, sunflowers are a big hit according to the chief farm operator at Green Door Gourmet.
"The heat really pushed their bloom time forward," Sylvia Ganier said.
Last year, they opened the sunflower field to the public and 1,000 people showed up on a Thursday.
"We had people literally showing up Saturday and Sunday they had driven from Ontario," Ganier said.
After the big turn out last year, Ganier decided to expand the sunflower field to 20 acres in hopes it will bring more people to the farm.
"We will be ready to go for that first weekend in August, and then we'll just have to see what mother nature's going to give us for how long we can go," Ganier said.
Usually, the sunflowers still stand strong into September, but this year that might not be the case. After the sunflowers bloomed early, they're waiting to plant the other flower seeds at a later date.
"A lot of plants will give you a range of time so they'll say 90 to 110 days for blooming, they all came on the earlier side of things this year for us," Ganier said, "Well mother nature is delaying the planting for us, she is making it hard to get in to work the soil or direct seed anything so we are kind of at her mercy until we can do our very last planting."
