After a warm dry spell of weather in October, we are more wet and have more typical temperatures. We made up for lost time in precipitation having 8.03 inches of rain for the month of November (as of 11/26). Most of this came on 11/4 and 11/5 when we got 6.37 inches of rain. This has slowed any fall field work but also replenished some much-needed soil moisture and runoff for local bodies of water as well. It has not been overly warm, however at my house, I still had pepper and tomatoes alive until we had a killing freeze on the morning of 11/26.
Field work has slowed down a lot, but by now fields have dried out enough to be passable to do fall cleanup. High tunnel crops have been doing well along with other fall cool season crops. My fall broccoli and cauliflower has been awesome (photo on right, N. Johanning, Illinois Extension 2024). Broccoli has all been harvested but some are producing side shoots here and there. Cauliflower is just now coming into its prime. I had two varieties and ‘Cheddar’ was ready first and has mostly all been harvested. ‘Twister’ was the white variety, and I have harvested about a third of the plants with the others ready soon. The quality has been amazing and very nice sized heads with some as much as 5 pounds. So far, I have not had to cover it with row cover, and I am hoping to have most everything harvested before the coldest weather comes which is predicted to hit the very last days of November into the start of December.
Fall cover crops have done very well and gotten good growth, especially with the rains we have had in November. The remaining area of the field that did not have pumpkins in at home got an oat/rapeseed/crimson clover cover crop planted on August 21. It has grown very well, although it struggled at first with the dry weather, but most areas held on for rain and it has some very nice cover now going into winter. Also, you may remember my reports on no-till planting sweet corn into a spring planted oat cover crop. In the very last planting date of sweet corn, in mid-June, the oats had matured. I had rolled them down and sprayed a burndown with residual and then later sprayed a post-herbicide to catch a few volunteer oat plants. We harvested some great sweet corn from this area and had great weed control from all the residue. Now the oats have completely reseeded and without doing anything I have another great oat cover crop stand. Sometimes the best cover crops are not the ones that we plant intentionally! I hope everyone has a great holiday season!