Local Foods and Small Farms Blogs

When I studied red knight bell peppers (X3R from Johnny’s Seeds) in South Dakota for graduate school, they loved the 90-degree Fahrenheit temperatures, possibly because of how dry and arid it was. Last summer, I really struggled with bell peppers as it was hot and humid with fluctuating...

Our 30th Annual Stateline Fruit and Vegetable Growers Conference was held on Monday, February 16, in Rockford. Nearly 120 growers and community college students attended this event, which focuses on timely updates for fruit and vegetable growers in Northern Illinois and Southern Wisconsin. We were...

Our outdoor growing season has come to an end with a few subfreezing mornings, with the coldest I have seen so far being December 5, registering 16 degrees Fahrenheit.  We got our first measurable snowfall on November 29, with about 3 inches of snow followed by 0.45 inches of very cold rain....

Yield data is collected every year from crops grown within the high tunnels at the Dixon Springs Agricultural Center in southern Illinois. Plots are assigned within each of the tunnels based on the type of research that is being conducted, and replicated data collection allows for statistical...

Whoever thought up harvesting the entire stalk of Brussels sprouts may be on to something.  Not only does it show consumers how brussels sprouts grow on the stem, it adds an interesting stacking texture to a display that draws interest.Locally, the St Louis Metro East has experienced a hard...

Two of the three high tunnels are completely cleaned out and have been winterized. The other tunnel has been seeded and is overwintering cover crops for the fourth winter in a row. Due to late-season tomato and pepper harvests, cover crops were seeded during the first week of November, about a...

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...

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...

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...

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...