Its first 2011 new-crop onions were out the door on July 12, early by Owyhee Produce’s own standards and ahead of other Idaho-Eastern Oregon onion shippers as well.

According to Shay Myers, general manager of Nyssa, OR-based Owyhee, the overwinter varieties were planted in 2010 in a microclimate in the IEO growing region.

“Because of those factors, we were five weeks earlier than normal,” Mr. Myers told The Produce News during the third week of September. “We’ve already planted for the same window next year.”

With a late start date of Sept. 6 for Treasure Valley onions, Joe Farmer, director of operations for Fort Boise Produce, said on Sept. 19 that the 2011 crop will be “a little on the smaller size with more mediums than normal.”

First onions coming in to the Parma, ID, facility were showing smaller size profiles across the variety board, although Mr. Farmer said that onions still in the fields will continue to size up a little.

As it nears its 100th anniversary as a grower-shipper of Treasure Valley Spanish Sweets, J.C. Watson Co. of Parma, ID, continues its forward momentum with corporate expansion as well as new packaging, new labels and ongoing food-safety protocol.

The company was started in 1912 and, with its trading member status established in 1929, also holds the distinction of being the only over-75-year-old trading member in the Blue Book’s onion-shipper category.

A cool spring in the Treasure Valley might have slowed onion growth initially, but John Wong, president of Champion Produce Sales Inc. in Parma, ID, said in mid-September that he expected a good storage crop.

“Our late summer has had higher temperatures and very good curing weather,” Mr. Wong told The Produce News. “We don’t have them all in the barn yet, however. Until we get that done, weather could still be a factor, and we always keep one eye to the sky.”

Still, he said, “we should have a well-cured crop in storage.”

Last year’s renovations to conserve energy at Murakami Produce reaped both a significant savings in storage-facility power costs and a prestigious award from Idaho Power.

Murakami General Manager Grant Kitamura said that the award was presented this summer and recognized the onion-shipping operation as among the top-10 best Idaho Power projects for the year.

The weather has been a wild ride for onion growers in Idaho-Eastern Oregon’s Treasure Valley. But as Kay Riley, general manager of Snake River Produce Co. in Nyssa, OR, noted, the onions are playing catch-up.

“We had a very wet, rainy spring,” he told The Produce News on Sept. 8. “The onions were planted 30 days from normal. But the weather in July and August was good. The crop is kind of making it up.”

In early September, Snake River was harvesting product for packing. Mr. Riley expected the harvest for storage onions would begin around mid-September.