Vegetables

Minnesota pumpkin numbers looking good at season’s end

While most national attention is focused on the “Frankenstorm” that pounded the East Coast this Halloween, Minnesota farmers appear to have wrapped up a good to great harvest for most crops this season.We don't know... more »

Benton City farm produces plethora of pumpkins

Chances are the pumpkins you picked up at the grocery store to carve up for Halloween this year were grown somewhere in Benton County.Robert Cox Farms of Benton City supplies all the pumpkins sold by... more »

Corn mazes, pumpkin patches and U-pick fruit are part of a growing agritourism trend

You know it's fall when your Facebook feed is full of photos of your friends and their children exploring corn mazes, picking out pumpkins and going on hay rides.For many, such activities are tradition.And for... more »

Healthy living and buying local still driving seed trends

When it comes to vegetable seed trends, the story continues to be buying locally grown fruits and vegetables and knowing where your food comes from. Food trends expert Phil Lempert said that consumers have become... more »

Processing pumpkins boost illinois acreage

For growers around Morton, Ill., the so-called Pumpkin Capital of the World, fall is a very busy time of year, said Mohammad Babadoost, a researcher with the University of Illinois who studies pumpkins and other... more »

Central Illinois farm market going strong despite drought, frost

Tanner's Orchard is celebrating its 65th year as a family-run business. The 80-acre, Speer, Ill., farm and market was founded in 1947 by John Tanner. The original family farm was started in 1906 in Deer... more »

California seeks to distinguish its cantaloupes

California melons will begin bearing a "Buy California Grown" sticker in an effort to distinguish the state's crop from others.Steve Patricio, president of Westside Produce and the California Cantaloupe Advisory Board, and a grower himself,... more »

California’s Central Valley in peril

I left Los Angeles at 4 in the morning, long before first light, and made it to Bakersfield — the land of oil derricks, lowriders and truck stops with Punjabi food — by 6. Ten... more »