The 2015 Vidalia onion crop is shaping up to be “normal,” which is welcomed news on the heels of three topsy-turvy seasons that saw wild fluctuations in volume and markets. That means retailers can plan with confidence for ample supply and excellent quality coming out of the region through August.

“We would take a normal year and be thankful for it,” said Delbert Bland, owner of Bland Farms LLC in Glennville, GA.

Bland started harvesting the week of April 6, shipped its first onions April 10, “and we’ve shipped very heavy since then,” Bland said.

This will not be a bumper crop with phenomenal yields, but the quality so far has been outstanding. And while it is too soon to tell how the crop will eventually size up, “we don’t have any problems in the fields and we think it’s going to be a very normal crop. There won’t be extremely high yields or extremely low, just about normal. We’ve been very pleased with our quality — they’ve been excellent,” Bland said.

The Vidalia deal is coming into a solid sweet onion market set up by diminished supply, a situation set up by an early end to western U.S. storage sweet onions and problems with yield and quality from Mexico and Texas.

“That’s helped us a lot because there seems to be a lot of demand, it’s been fairly good,” Bland said. “The market has held pretty firm and it should continue to do so — there’s not going to be oversupply here by any means.”

That means a quality Vidalia onion coming out of storage in June or later will find a very welcoming market.

“That’s the way it looks,” Bland said. “You get out of storage what you put in from a quality standpoint. We’ve already begun to put part of these in storage now and we feel very good about them. We’re running right along. Everything’s running really smooth and we’re very pleased at this point.

“The biggest thing I’m excited about is the quality of the crop,” he added. “At the end of the day you can play with markets and talk about all that, but the difference between us having a good year and not having a good year is the quality of the crop and that’s what really makes it. At the end of the day, it’s our quality.”