While Herndon Farms of Lyons, GA, is best-known for its “Vidalia’s Finest” sweet onions, its product line is actually quite diverse and drawing more attention every day even as Vidalia season approaches.

The anchor crop Vidalias were looking good in mid-March and barring complications should make for an excellent deal, according to Sales and Marketing Manager John Williams.

We’ve got a good stand today so we’re proud of it,” Williams said. “The onions are nice and clean and we don’t see a lot of disease pressure — we’re just keeping our fingers crossed.”

The Vidalia deal will be later than normal by as much as two weeks, and Williams hopes retailers will not give in to temptation and stock up with early onions before production ramps up to full volume and quality.

“It’s going to be a little later than anticipated. There will be onions available on (the first official day of the season) April 21 but if you’ve got to buy that onion, don’t fill your pipelines up with it because it’s not what you need to promote and not what we want to ship from our farm. We’re looking at not having volume for seven to 10 days after April 21.”

The sweet onion market is so tight some retail buyers have actually jokingly asked Williams if growers are trying to artificially inflate prices.

That is no laughing matter to Williams. “It’s super tight right now, but there are growers who really need a good year with these Vidalias,” he said. “We’re not just gathering in the money by the handfuls, we need a good solid year, not just us, plenty of growers. I’m really hoping we’ll have good volume and a good price and good demand. We’ve all got our fingers crossed — there’s not a whole lot to report, but we’re proud of what we’ve got in the field right now.”

As of mid-March, “The onions aren’t even pushing dirt yet, you’ve got four weeks after that happens before you know how the crop will size up. Mediums have gotten so popular in recent years we’ve been a little short, especially early on; I don’t want a flood of them this year but if it swung just a little bit the other way that would be OK because the consumer packs have just gotten so popular. We’ve really seen that increase. But it’s too early to tell how the breakdown is going to be.”

Meanwhile Herndon’s other product lines are increasing in popularity. The locally grown sweet potato has been so popular retailers are driving Herndon toward a longer deal, which will come about via grower-partner relationships in Mississippi, North Carolina and Louisiana.

“I’m still shipping sweet potatoes out of those areas even though our deal’s done in Georgia,” Williams said. “We’re definitely into that big time. Earlier this week we planted the seed beds with seed out of North Carolina that will make our own plants and we’ll do a few cuttings off these seed beds — this will really be our first time and we’re hoping we can cut them and transplant them about the time we’re heavy into corn and onions. We’re kind of just venturing off in that whole deal. Obviously we’re not the only ones in the Vidalia area doing sweet potatoes now — we’re all kind of just venturing off in that whole deal — but it works well with our onion drying room and our field rotation and works well with commodities as far as buyers go because they buy potatoes too. It’s a pretty good fit for our onion program.”

Herndon’s sweet potato deal will grow by 50-80 acres this year, and it’s baby Vidalia program is also booming.

“We’re shipping a good many of those, people really love them. We’re working with a lot of retailers especially in the Southeast and it’s done well for us,” Williams said. At the Southeast Produce Council’s Southern Exposure trade show in Orlando in February, “even more people saw them and wanted to know about them and could they ship out to California and so forth, so there’s real big interest. People just like that item.”

Herndon started planting its famous sweet corn in mid-March and Williams hopes retailers will see the value of staying with that deal the entire month of June instead of jumping in for the Fourth of July.

Last year rain compressed the corn deal into a three-week window instead of the normal five. The volume was even more substantial than in a normal year.

“I find it fun because the volume is just so impressive,” Williams said. “When we start shipping in June we try to get our customers to start with us — like Bo Herndon says, ‘My little girl could sell sweet corn that last week in June,’ anybody can sell it then, but we want to start with customers and ask them to handle it with us. We grow it in house, harvest it with three of our own harvesters, we cool it ourselves, we have our own icehouse, we hire two extra drivers and when you control everything like that you can really make sure the quality is right where you want it.”