It is too soon to know how this year’s Vidalia crop will ultimately turn out — the onion gets most of its size during its last few weeks underground and most growers won’t begin shipping until the last week of April — but early season weather problems appear to have been overcome and the region is expecting a typical season based on stands in the field.

Which is not a bad thing. Vidalia hasn’t had a “normal” season in several years, facing down a variety of threats from downy mildew to freezing weather that wiped out last year’s organic crop.

Even this year, an El Nino weather pattern led to torrential rains during planting time — November and December — and into January. Unseasonably warm temperatures persisted to the new year. The end result was some minimal crop loss — across the board the region expects to produce 11,000 acres to 12,000 acres. Last year’s crop was a little over 12,000 acres.

After the challenging start, the official ship date for the Vidalia season as set by Georgia Commissioner of Agriculture Gary Black is April 25, though there will undoubtedly be some onions on the market before that date.

“We had a hard time even getting the acreage in, it was all too wet and too boggy,” said Ronny Collins of Plantation Sweets in Cobbtown, GA. “We are down a little bit in acreage as is the entire industry. It looks like we are going to have a good quality crop but the stands were reduced. The first 25 percent of what was planted, most everybody’s got some stand reduction in that percentage. So the supply is going to be down a little, but don’t throw up any red flags — we will have more than enough supply available for our retailers to run ads.”

With the 2016 Texas crop already reduced, growers are coming into a high market for sweet onions.

“We did have a difficult time when we first set out because it was so wet and so hot, unusually warm and wet due to El Nino. The onions did a decent job making it through the winter, but I’m telling you, they woke up about a month ago and they are beautiful right now,” said Delbert Bland of Bland Farms LLC in Glennville, GA. “It looks like we could have a very good crop of onions at this point but what’s so critical about Vidalias is they get all their growth and size in the month of March -- and the 10-day forecast looks perfect. So we’re excited about it. The sweet onion market is pretty strong and it should be strong going right into Vidalia so that’ll be great.”

Said John Shuman of Shuman Produce Inc. in Reidsville, GA, “As of early March the Vidalia onion crop is a little bit of a mixed review, we’ve had some fluctuations in weather and a lot of wet weather, particularly in November and December when we were transplanting to the field. From that we’ve had some stand loss across the industry, but we feel it’s going to come in around 12,000 acres, similar to what it was last year. It’s too early to tell, right now the onions are coming back and rebounding, they look good. We’ve had some really good weather the past couple of weeks and it’s been very helpful.”

Added Bo Herndon of LG Herndon Jr Farms in Lyons, GA, “While we’re down overall in our industry, we’ve got a real good crop. There are a lot of farmers with a lot of onions, but there are a lot that lost some stands. But Texas has lost a lot of their onions so Vidalia should come on strong and have a good market all year. The weather’s changed and it looks real good. I’m real proud of what we have today.”

“Everybody’s in the same boat,” said Kevin Hendrix of Hendrix Produce Inc. in Metter, GA. “First of November it started raining and rained every week. Then the weather was really warm, Christmas day it was 85 degrees. It was a lot warmer than normal, we didn’t get any cold weather until January.”

Growers are looking forward to getting back in to the organic market in a big way after a freeze destroyed most of the 2015 crop. Some have increased acreage by as much as double and all have a stake in organic production.

“We doubled our acres on organics, I cleaned up about 500 acres of pine trees and these farms are just going to be designated for organic stuff,” Herndon said. “Our organic onions look really good and I’m real proud of them at this date.”

“We had a very difficult time with organics last year but this year they look good,” Bland said. “So we’ll have a lot of organic onions – about 200 acres, about seven percent of our overall crop and that’s about our sales.”

“Organics continue to grow and become more popular and they’re an important part of our program,” Shuman said. “They’re a lot harder to grow — you don’t have a lot of the traditional means to cultivate and farm your crop and protect yourself against some problems.”