Commercial Fruit and Vegetable Growers 2025

This October has brought excellent apple harvests across many Northern Illinois orchards, with a mix of traditional, PRI, and MAIA varieties showing strong performance. I visited several orchards this past month and saw healthy crops and steady visitor turnout. Post-harvest fruit quality has varied...

Its officially Halloween season, but that also means that frost is near for Northern Illinois. Some parts of the area have been affected by spotty frost, like Kendall County and parts of Western Kane County, which takes most crops out of production. For the operations impacted by frost, there may...

The St Louis Metro East region has been so dry the last several months that it was rather bittersweet for the St Louis Metro East to receive a 3” rain event on one of the biggest fall agritourism weekends.  On the one hand, the entire landscape was in desperate need of rain, but on the other...

October started as a continuation of the above normal temperatures and dry conditions. Temperatures have started to get closer to average in the last half of the month and finally we broke our dry spell. We had 2.71 inches of rain as of October 19 which was the first rainfall in almost a...

The continued warm temperatures through October made for ideal growing conditions for the tomatoes and peppers within the high tunnels at DSAC. While not the large yields like in mid-July harvests, tomatoes harvested in October had excellent flavor, size, no white core issues, and were probably the...

The 2025 pumpkin season is now mostly in the books for most growers, so I wanted to look back at some of the observations and challenges of the season.The early wet weather in May and then drought would probably be the biggest challenges.  Where the drought and heat were most intense, we did...

Weather and precipitation summary for Bloomington-NormalHere in central Illinois over the last 30 days, the hottest temperature observed was 91°F on September 13th, while the coolest temperature observed was 43°F on August 26th.Many mornings and...

Antibiotic resistance continues to be a problem, that needs to be solved. Antibiotic resistance is when it becomes more difficult to kill bacteria using antibiotics. When foodborne pathogens become antibiotic resistant, the people who contract a foodborne illness may not respond well to treatment....

As of this week, 9/22, we are about halfway into the apple season in Northern Illinois. I’ve had the opportunity to visit six orchards in the area this month and the crop looks good overall. Some orchards are running about a week ahead compared to last season. The end of September will bring...

Despite droughty conditions much of the growing season, the pumpkin crop looks plentiful.  Apple harvest is in the ‘Golden Delicious’ window, including ‘Pixie Crunch’ into ‘Braeburn’.  Though in the tail end, tomatoes are still in harvest.  Fall activities like corn mazes, pumpkin...

Whether it feels like fall or not, fall is here, and pumpkin season has started.  We have been very dry and other than a few breaks have had temperatures early in September in the 90s and now have dropped back to the mid to upper 80s for highs.  Rainfall down here has been minimal. ...

Tomato harvest has been steady but less than mid-summer for the past three weeks mainly due to a more moderate flower set and fruits ripening slower, creating a reduction in overall fruit load compared to July. Peppers are continuing to size well and have allowed for a once per week harvest time...

Dry or low moisture foods do not quickly come to mind when we think about foodborne illnesses and the ways to reduce them. In fact, these foods are not among the top three foods linked to foodborne disease outbreaks in the United...

Trent Ford, Illinois State Climatologist, provided this weather report. Fall came early in Illinois, with temperatures between 1.5 and 3.5 degrees below normal since late August (Figure 1). Nighttime low temperatures have dipped into the low 40s and upper 30s multiple times, and we set some low...

After missing an update in September, a lot has occurred in the melon research plot. Melons were maturing nicely until disease pressure set in late August, which was later identified as anthracnose. Melons started to show signs of disease on fruit, and vines were beginning to die off with immature...

Northern Illinois Orchards OpenApple season begins toward the end of August. Most orchards have announced their openings for the weekend of August 23rd, with almost all open by August 30th. This timing is driven largely by 'Zestar!', a...

As kids go back to school, operations have started the shift from summer crops over to fall crops, which includes the transition from peaches to apples. Peaches are in the ‘Cresthaven’ window, with cultivars like ‘Encore’, ‘Autumnstar’ and ‘Laurol’ yet to finish out the season.  Apples are in...

Now is time to think about those fall cool season crops despite the fact the thermometer feels quite the opposite. I no-till transplanted my fall broccoli & cauliflower August 10. It caught a small shower that day but that didn’t go far and we have watered some to get them established. I also...

Conditions in far southeastern Illinois have been similar to those around the St. Louis area as far as heat and high humidity levels. The sustained, elevated humidity along with temperatures in the mid to upper 90s have created conditions with heat index values ranging from 105 to 110 degrees...

The following article was written by Dr. James Santiago, Assistant Professor Horticulture, University of Illinois Department of Crop Sciences. Many specialty crops we consume develop from flowers including apples, squash, beans, peas, etc. Having an elongated shape, the State of Illinois has...