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.

Into its fourth decade as a producer of quality onions from the Treasure Valley, Fiesta Farms Inc. understands Mother Nature’s mood swings. Cooler-than-normal temperatures and wet conditions characterized much of the current growing season. Looking forward, Vice President Marc Bybee put it this way: “We need a long, dry fall to get the crop put away well. Without it, we could have serious quality problems later on. We are longing for a ‘normal’ year to happen again someday.”

Central Produce Distributors, headquartered in Payette, ID, entered its second week packing onions in early September. “We’re a little behind,” General Manager Ray Burzota told The Produce News on Sept. 8.

He said that conditions were cool during the spring, but onions bounced back in July and August when temperatures began to climb.

The company works with 10 growers in the Treasure Valley that produce the Vaquero, Pandero and Granero onion varieties.

Cool weather earlier in the year is expected to affect onion sizing during the first half of the current season for Ontario Produce.

On Sept. 8, Sales Manager Bob Komoto provided some insights about the coming season. “The weather in the spring was wet and prevented a normal planting time,” he stated. “After the crop was planted, it remained cool in April and May. Temperatures remained below normal until July. If we get a good, warm and dry fall, the rest of the harvest could be closer to normal.”

Washington’s apple producers are ready to move apples into a lean, clean pipeline as the 2011-12 season ramps up. “As of this morning, we have [fewer] than three million boxes [of old-crop apples] left,” Charles Pomianek, director of the Wenatchee Valley Traffic Association, told The Produce News Aug. 29. “We’re out of fruit in the state of Washington right now.”