When ice and freezing rain blanketed the South in early
February, sweet Vidalia onions
didn’t take so kindly to it.
In Tattnall County, in the heart of Georgia’s onion-growing
country, the ice storm
produced mixed results.
“We have some significant loss,” said Reid
Torrance, Tattnall County director
for the University of Georgia Extension Service.
“It’s hard to put an exact percentage on it at this
point,” Torrance said.
“But some fields are going to suffer heavy losses. Others
will suffer no loss.”
The range of damage depends on the plants’ stage of growth
when the freeze hit, the
plant variety and the soil type.
“We’re finding that onions in wetter places in fields,
and in soils with higher
clay content, seem to be surviving better than in very sandy
soils,” Torrance said.
“We’re also learning a lot about onion varieties and their
levels of cold
tolerance.”
Torrance found that, as a rule, the Asgrow Y33, Asgrow 6020
varieties and a Rio
Colorado variety called Sweet Vidalia seem to be more cold-
tolerant than some of the other
varieties.
The plant’s maturity also played a major part in the extent
of the damage.
“Most of our onions were set, or planted, in
November,” Torrance said.
“Some of the later-planted onions seem to be taking it
better than some we set
earlier.”
The more mature the plant, the larger and lusher the
aboveground growth.
“Now we have a lot of dead tissue on those with lush
tops,” he said.
“We’re hoping for dry weather so that will dry up and we’ll
get some new growth that
will stay with us.”
Dead tops don’t necessarily mean dead plants.
“If the freeze damage to the bulb was not too severe,
then that plant will
survive,” Torrance said. “We just have a lot of plants
right now that we don’t
know which side of the fence they will fall on.
“Physiologically, the onion’s energy reserves are in the
bulb, and it will shoot
out new growth,” he said. “The question is: Will it
continue to grow, or once it
uses all that energy in the bulb, will it die?
“That’s what takes us so long to assess the
damage,” he said. “A large
portion of the crop could go either way.”
Georgia’s onion crop is worth more than $50 million to the
state’s economy. About half
of that is grown in Tattnall County.
