- Simply Sweet
- Colossal onion is signature crop
- By Greg Brown
Associate Editor
- What is a Simply Sweet onion?
It is an onion grown in Pennsylvania under a set of strict standards, governed by a committee set up by the Pennsylvania Vegetable Growers Association (PVGA).
But as far as consumers are concerned it is a big, sweet onion that stores well. It doesn’t hurt that the onion comes available just after the Vidalia season, filling a window for sweet onion consumers.
The trademarked onion, created with the help of researchers at Penn State University, and the input of the PVGA and the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, is grown under special conditions that evolved out of experiments by Michael Orzolek, professor of vegetable crops at Penn State University.
Orzolek said in order to provide onions with the reliable moisture they need in Penn- sylvania’s growing conditions, he planted the onions on a raised bed covered in plastic. Grown with two strips of trickle tape running the length of the raised bed, the onions are planted at a four-wide, six-inch interval.
That makes for a lot of onions per acre – well over 80,000, according to John Hunter, a grower in Washington County, Pa. who grew just a quarter acre last year.
“We didn’t know what we got into when we got into growing Simply Sweets,” said Hunter. “There isn’t a transplanter that plants the onions, we almost have to crawl along the ground planting them.”
But the hard work paid off last year for the retired dairy farmer. “We had more requests for onions than we had onions,” he said. On the quarter acre Hunter and his brother and three grandsons planted 20,000 onions from four-inch high transplants. Hunter shared his packing facility with several other area growers who grew the big onions.
William Troxell, executive secretary of the PVGA, said the association has set up a committee to actually hold the trademark and issue the grower and handler licenses. The committee was organized in January and has a separate budget from the association.
“The committee is setting standards and has met to firmly define what makes an onion Simply Sweet, based on variety, the growing conditions, the sugar content and the pyruvic acid concentration,” said Troxell. “The grading standards for these onions will start at 2.5 inches and go up from there. These onions will range from jumbo to colossal to super colossal in size.”
Mike Kotz is a handler who is promoting the onion and has been involved with the project for nearly four years in some way or another. Kotz worked with Orzolek for two fixed-term appointments to try new products and marketing options for growers in Western Pennsylvania.
The work began as a way to test a variety of crops, including bell peppers and onions. “We encouraged local growers to try the onion and we found out that the market potential was more than big enough to support additional efforts in Western Pennsylvania,” said Kotz.
When his fixed term expired, Kotz started Cross Creek Farm LLC to market the onions. He found markets in Philadelphia and Harrisburg.
The response to the onion has been great.
“In one instance, we no sooner sent out the first truck and two days later they wanted more,” said Kotz. “It is encouraging to have such a demand for a signature Pennsylvania product.”
The committee has increased the number of licensed growers this year who will be shipping under the trademark. Kotz said that the demand exceeded production significantly last year and that the expertise in the production methods perfected through Penn State research has made the state one of the first to produce plasticulture onions on a large scale.
The huge onions that result from the procedure should continue to be a big hit with consumers.
“They’re real big, softball-size sweet onions,” said Hunter, “They have a good taste - but you eat them and that’s the end of it.”
Hunter says he could have sold more if he had them, and will be adding more plants this year. They are labor intensive but Hunter said they had a lot of help this season.
Orzolek said that Penn State ag engineers are researching a variety of solutions to the labor-intensive method of producing onions. A transplanter and harvestor for the raised beds is not far off, according to the researcher.
