Divided opinions about when the Vidalia onion season should officially begin — played out in Georgia courtrooms earlier this spring — have taken a backseat to more pressing matters, like the promising crop that most south Georgia growers started harvesting around Easter.

There has been much debate over the quality of early season Vidalias in recent years. Last November, Georgia Commission of Agriculture Gary Black stepped in and proclaimed that no onions could be packed or shipped with the Vidalia label prior to the third Monday in April — April 21 this year. While most growers supported the decision, some — like Delbert Bland of industry giant Bland Farms LLC in Glennville, GA — felt otherwise.

Black was able to impose the mandatory start date because the state of Georgia actually owns the “Vidalia” trademark. In the wake of complaints about the quality of early-season onions over the past few years, the commissioner set the annual pack and ship date in hopes of protecting the reputation of one of the state’s most valuable properties.

Bland disagreed, saying “Mother Nature decides when an onion is ready, not an arbitrary date on a calendar,” and appealed Black’s decision in court. A judge ruled in his favor in late March.

Black’s office has filed an appeal in Georgia’s appellate courts, and has said any grower packing and shipping onions labeled as Vidalias before April 21 was still subject to the mandatory start date while the appeal process continues. Violators face fines of up to $5,000 per box packed or shipped prior to April 21.

That did not stop Bland from moving forward with his early crop in order to satisfy contracts with major retailers. His harvest actually began several days before Easter and packing began April 16.

“We started as early as we needed to,” Bland said in late April. “Our intent all the time was to not start until the onions were ready to ship, and they were ready. The crop is beautiful at this time, it’s a very sellable crop of onions, the quality seems to be very good and I’ve heard nothing but positive comments. I got three emails from retailers the first week saying they thought the onions looked beautiful. That doesn’t usually happen.”

Talk about the mandatory pack date “is kind of an old headline now,” said John Shuman of Shuman Produce Inc. in Reidsville, GA, who backs Commissioner Black. “It’s time to get down to work and pay attention to what’s going on with the crop and the season and move on. It’s still very much in the back of everyone’s mind, but it’s going to work itself through the appellate court and we’re letting the appeal process take its course and I think everybody’s just kind of adopted an attitude of we’ll wait and see how that unfolds and go from there.

“But I don’t think anyone has forgotten what has happened, it’s very fresh in our minds right now. Obviously for those of us who have waited for the mandatory start date, we’re a little frustrated everybody wasn’t onboard. We were very hopeful this new regulation would bring a consensus to it and an end to it; it’s not perfect but it is what it is. Let’s move on. It’s time to work — the onion season’s here. We’ll let the appeals process take care of this and we’ll accept the verdict and the outcome of the appellate court and take the appropriate next steps.”

Bland agreed that “everybody’s said everything there is to say. We can talk more down the road about why it happened like it did, but we’ve got a crop to sell.”

By all accounts, this Vidalia crop is shaping up to be a winner. The crop came on a little later than normal due to cooler than usual spring and winter weather, but a week into harvest there were no pest or disease pressures and sizing was tending towards large, though there were plenty of mediums as well. In all, it looks like a well-balanced crop that will make for easy marketing.

“If you have too many mediums, you have to go chase promotions on that side, if you have to many jumbos, it’s the same thing,” Shuman said. “The weeks of April 21 and April 28, sizing has been good, with good packouts so far on jumbo and colossal, it’s been normal and exactly what we want to see. We haven’t had extremely skewed percentages towards medium or jumbo … and it’s good to see that — when it’s a good normal breakdown coming out of the fields you’re not stressed in either direction. That gives us plenty of options and good availability for the market demand.”