onions

Press release: 

There's some big onions growing in the muck of Genesee and Orleans counties.

A photographer lining up his focus on a particularly bulbous specimen observes, "I don't remember seeing any onions this big last year."

"I haven't seen onions this big in 15 years," responds Paul Mortellaro, co-owner of Mortellaro Brothers in Elba.

On the one hand, the heavy rains of spring created near optimal growing conditions, especially for the onions that were started as transplants. On the other, heavy rain caused some flooding and damaged portions of some fields.

"You're not going to get 100 percent of your crop on 100 percent of your land, but I haven't seen a crop like this in 10 years," Mortellaro said.

Over the next few weeks, local onion farmers will be reaping that harvest. Already, several hundred acres of onions have been crated and bagged.

Much of the success so far of the onion crop is really the near ideal growing conditions of the middle of summer, where enough rain fell to feed the onions, but cool weather and enough dry days allowed perfect growing conditions.

The muckland farmers still have potential weather problems to worry about before the growing and harvest season is over. Mortellaro recalled one year when a severe hail storm came through and heavily damaged the crops of a couple of farms unlucky enough to have their fields right in the line of the main part of the storm.

But if conditions remain good, 2014 will go down as an excellent year for local onions.

A Mortellaro field. Once onions are ready for harvest, a machine pulls them from the ground and sets them back on the soil so the onions can dry before being harvested.

A big onion in a Torrey Farms field.

Mortellaro onions ready for harvest. As part of processing, the dry outer skins are removed, so they'll have a nice shine on store shelves.

Dried onions in a Torrey field being harvested.

Workers at Torrey Farms crate harvested onions. At the Torrey plant, workers arrange three rows of 20 crates each, with enough space between to drive a truck through. Trucks come in only minutes apart, giving workers very little time between loads to get the trucks empty. Mortellaro said it's a difficult job, hot and dusty and constant motion.

Crates full of onions at Mortellaro's processing facility.

Torrey Onions

Not onions. Beets. MY-T Acres land at Transit and Chapell roads, Byron.

There are some years that are better than others for onion growers.

This year is one of the others.

Paul Mortellaro, co-owner of G Mortellaro And Sons in Elba, said this year's harvest will be about 60 to 75 percent of an average year and about 50 percent of a good year.

That sounds about right, said John Torrey, of Big-O Farms, Elba.

Wind, cold and rain either blew away or drowned a good portion of the onion crop this summer.

"The onions were thinned so much by the wind that you're not seeing a lot of small bulbs, but you're not seeing a lot of tonnage because there's not a high enough plant population," Mortellaro said.

Big-O runs a huge onion operation and Torrey agreed that wind and water were a problem this year.

"We've had our challenges during the growing season," Torrey said. "While we're in the midst of a full harvest, we're probably going to have a little below average yield."

The price for onions right now -- a market largely determined by Western growers -- is from $9 to $11 per 50-pound bag, Mortellero said. That's decent, but of course local onion growers would like to see it go higher.

Onions are a slow crop to bring to maturity and harvesting them is a slow process, too. The harvest started in July and will continue through October.

Out on the muck today, I met Elizabeth Buck and Courtney Hill, researchers from Cornell. They are assisting in a project to test four different kinds of possible treatments to combat rhizoctonia. Rhizoctonia is a fungus that goes after the roots of onions. (Pictured above, Hill; Buck is pictured in the slide show below).

We've been tracking this year's onion crop and we checked in on the mucklands today, and from the road, the fields looked pretty good, but looks can be deceiving, said Paul Mortellaro, of G Mortellaro And Sons in Elba.

From the air, Mortellaro said, you can see a lot of open patches and thin spots.

"You'll probably see averages of 500 to 600 bags (50-pound bags) per acre," Mortellaro said. "Some less, some maybe 1,000. That's pretty disappointing."

Right now onions are trading at $13 per bag, but with transportation costs for Elba onions, that brings the crop yield down to about $6 per bag.

"At $6 per bag, you cannot make a living like that, not in Elba," Mortellaro said. "You can do that out west, but you can't do it here."

He said he and his brother are in no hurry to harvest their onions -- but will do so at the end of the month -- unlike last year when onions were going for $20 per bag.

The onions that were transplants -- such as the one pictured above from a Torrey field -- are developing bulbs and some have already been harvested, Mortellaro said. Those fields are generally in better shape than those planted with seeds, which have not yet started to bulb.

The problem this year: too much rain and not enough warm, dry days between storms.

Wind and rain over the past few weeks are making muck farmers a little edgy about their onion crop for this season.

They know now they won't have a bumper crop, especially from fields planted with seed rather than transplants, but what happens with the weather over the next four weeks will be critical.

Following two-and-a-half inches of rain last week, they need some dry whether, but another inch of rain is forecast for tomorrow (Thursday).

"It would be nice if it were 80 degrees, sunny and a little bit of breeze," said Paul Mortellaro of G. Mortellaro & Sons.

On a tour of the muck today, Mortellaro pointed out the fields planted with transplants look pretty healthy. They're less susceptible to rain and the bigger plants are better equipped to respirate (pump off the water from the ground).

Fields planted with seedlings have been thinned out by wind -- wind can shear off an onion top -- or have been too saturated by water and there's been some die-off.

The right time for some rain would be when the onions start to bulb, which is three our four weeks from now.

"What determines the size of the onion is its size when it starts to bulb," Mortellaro said. "We need some good rain during that time."

Even with the slow start, the muckers could get perfect whether the rest of the season and enjoy a good harvest.

"Three or for weeks from now, this all could be forgotten," Mortellaro said.

"He's right," said Maureen Torrey of Torrey Farms. "We have a long way to go before our crops are made."

Beyond that, Torrey was hesitant to comment because she didn't want to jinx anything.

Christian Yunker at CY Farms said early indications are yields will be down this year, but how much depends on what happens with the weather the rest of the growing season.

Right now, he said, a lot of onions have "wet feet," and that inhibits their growth. Like other farmers of the muck, he's hoping tomorrow's storm doesn't do too much damage and then we get some dry weather.

"It's pretty early to tell, but we've taken a little bit of a hit," Yunker said. "They're not off to a great start, but it's too early to say your yield will be down to X."

Photo: A seeded muck field. The dead-looking plants in between the green rows of onions is barley, planted along side the onion seeds to act as a wind break. Once the onions reach a certain stage of grow, the barley is killed off.