A nippy new year sent a shiver through Vidalia onion farmers.
But they’re breathing
easier now. The frosty first week caused little damage to
the sweet Georgia crop, said a University of Georgia
scientist.

“We saw some damage to the leaves,” said Al Purvis, a
research horticulturist
with the UGA College of
Agricultural and Environmental
Sciences at the Coastal Plain Experiment
Station in Tifton, Ga.

“But the cold didn’t damage the growing points in the
onion plants,” Purvis
said. “That’s certainly good news that there wasn’t any
major negative effect on the
plants.”

Reid Torrance is a
county extension agent in
Tattnall County, where about 60 percent of the Vidalia
onions grow. He said the onions
were prepared for the cold this year.

“It’s not like it was in ’96,” Torrance said. A mid-
February freeze then cost
Georgia onion farmers about half their crop.

The cold weather came in a little more gradually this
year, he said. And this year, the
onions weren’t in the middle of a growth spurt and were less
susceptible to the damage.

“The tips of the foliage showed a little freezing. But we
don’t anticipate any
long-term damage from this freeze,” Torrance said.

Toombs County Extension Agent Rick Hartley said
the below-20-degree cold in his county slowed the onions’
growth.

“We saw a lot of wind and cold damage in our earliest-
planted onions. But they
should survive,” Hartley said.

Onions planted in December in Toombs County lost most of
their leaves from cold damage.
But “new buds are beginning to emerge, and the plants should
make a comeback,”
Hartley said.

Toombs County farmers grow about 20 percent of the
Vidalia onion crop in Georgia.

The young onion crop, planted in November and December
with harvest expected in April
or May, still has a lot to go through before harvest.

“These next few weeks are critical,” Hartley
said. “Continuous mid-teen
cold or an unseasonable warm period could escalate crop
damage.”

Georgia’s onion crop has blossomed in recent years, with
production jumping from just
more than 138 million pounds in 1993 to more than 347
million pounds in 1998. The crop
value has more than doubled in five years to $88.9
million.