By Clint Thompson
While the prolonged drought that impacted the Southeast this year reduced yields in some areas, the dry conditions provided some benefit for South Georgia’s Vidalia onion crop, particularly at harvest.
Chris Tyson, University of Georgia Extension area onion agent at the Vidalia Onion & Vegetable Research Center in Lyons, Georgia, recapped this year’s season, highlighted mostly by dry weather during harvest season.
“Overall, we did okay. We were very dry, and I think that was very good for harvest. It allowed us to get the crop out on time,” Tyson said. “I think, overall, our yields were down some, and we can attribute that possibly to the drought and maybe to some freeze events that we had during the season. However, when I say the yields are off, it just affected the size of the crop.
“The onions aren’t quite as big as they normally are, but the quality is great. There was really good quality. And the dry weather actually helped us in that regard at harvest.”
Timely Harvests
Timely harvests are key every year to Georgia’s Vidalia onion industry. Since conditions were dry during spring this year, growers were not delayed in moving the crop out of the field and into storage.
“It’s a big deal every year. It’s on everybody’s mind every year, and it’s kind of a race to get the crop out,” Tyson said. “Once your crop is sized up like you want it, once it’s to the size you need, nothing really good happens to it after that. It’s just a race to get it out of the elements and get it into storage where you can preserve it.
“In some years, the rain definitely causes us delays or additional disease pressure, and it can hurt our crop. But that wasn’t the case this year.”