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Tough start to watermelon season in central Illinois

A central Illinois specialty crop grower says the 2025 growing season has been less than ideal.

“It’s been too cold and windy.”

Dale Hodgson, who grows a variety of produce on 150 irrigated acres in Mason County, says the rainy start to June is also a concern for his melon crops. 

“A perfect year for us, we’d start the first of May, and it didn’t rain all year long.”  He says, “That’d be a perfect year. Rain causes disease problems and everything else. You get a rain when you’re picking the crop, and it affects the quality of the produce. Plus, it gets you behind a day or two. So best thing is if you can just pick every day.”

Even though excessive rains can also lead to nutrient concerns on his operation’s sandy soils, Hodgson tells Brownfield he’s still optimistic for a good watermelon season. 

“A good year we pick a couple hundred thousand watermelons and a hundred thousand cantaloupe, too, probably.”  He says, “That’s all by hand, just like it used to be.”

Hodgson says a more summer-like forecast the rest of the month is welcome as hotter and drier conditions typically produce sweeter watermelons.

Hodgson says he markets the melons through his local retail outlet, as well as to regional wholesalers covering about a 150-mile radius around his farm.

Brownfield spoke with Hodgson on the recent Illinois Farm Bureau Summer Ag Tour.

AUDIO: Dale Hodsgon – Illinois farmer