In the last couple of weeks, we've been experiencing a good amount of rainfall that has fulfilled most of our crops' water needs. This is in comparison to last year when we saw drought conditions at this time. So you might think it's misguided for me to bring up irrigation management at a time...

In June, Governor Quinn signed into law HB5657 which modifies some of the farmers' market rules and regulations. New regulations included future streamlining of farmers market rules statewide, require a vendor to state the address where the vendor's products are grown, cap the fee a county health...

One of the great programs that has happened for the last couple years has been our OpenFields Farm Tours. I was fortunate to move up here last year a week before this event. For me, it was a great way to see what the farms in our area grow and are dealing with. You don't get these opportunities...

  What perfect timing it was to begin the blog for local foods in Northwest Illinois then to also have a great overview of local foods and agriculture written up in the Rockford Register Star's Rockford River Valley Insider's Agritourism section on June 22 (http://...

Welcome to the Local Foods blog for Northwest Illinois. My name is Grant McCarty and I am the Local Foods and Small Farms Educator for Jo Daviess, Stephenson, and Winnebago counties. This blog is set up to provide information on upcoming programs, resources, regional and national issues, and...

  The last week has proven a large infiltration of these disease causing pathogens of Fusarium/Verticillium, Bacterial Spot and Speck, and Septoria Leaf Spot. As I talked about previously on water, some of these can be worse than others and spread much easily. When it comes to diagnosing what you...

As I mentioned last week, I wanted to wait and talk about both Early and Late blights in a separate post as both of these can have serious consequences if they make it into your yard/operation. Late Blight is such an important disease that the USDA has a website for the mapping of Late Blight in...

Recently I was giving an opportunity to speak to a group of community economic development educators and stakeholders at a conference in Dubuque, Iowa. I was part of a mobile bus tour along with UW and Iowa State Extension where we took a bus to Hook's Cheese (...

I apologize for the delay in getting back into the blogosphere. As most of you have dealt with this fall, there is unevenness. Some weeks are still allowing for tomatoes and peppers to cling on. Then the first very, very light snow mixture occurred in Freeport on Saturday, October 4. This week has...

To kick off Pest of the Week , let's talk about a pest that you may be seeing. This past week I visited a grower that while we were looking at their potato plants we came across juveniles of the Colorado Potato Beetle (CPB). Source: NC State University It's a reddish, cream striped beetle seen...