Crop tour onions - week 25
In the picture: that is how far the growth of the onions lags behind
After the later sowing, followed by poor weather and now drought, the seed onions have suffered a considerable growth delay compared to other years. Photos from other years from the Gewastour show that the backlog has increased considerably.
The wet and relatively cold spring meant that the seed onions were sown almost 1 month later than last year. The average sowing date for the Crop Tour was 24 April. Some onion growers could only sow mid-April at the earliest and others had to postpone sowing again until the end of April/beginning of May after new rainfall. This was the first setback of the season.
Harvest time closer together
Traditionally, the southern regions of the Netherlands are always earlier with their sowing than the center and the north, but this year the average sowing dates are almost the same. As it seems now, this means that the harvest moment is closer together this year. Especially on the clay soils it took a long time before the soil was capable enough to sow. In general, it was possible to sow a little earlier on the sandy soils, which means that these onions are somewhat ahead of this year in terms of growth. But the fact that the onions start up faster on sandy soils is also something that comes back every year.
Way smaller
As we have seen again this season, there are many factors that can hinder or promote onion growth. Although we have been following various plots on all kinds of soil types at the Gewastour for years, the differences in growth stages vary considerably. What is striking is that the crop has a lot smaller and less volume compared to other years. The difference in the number of pipes seems to be not too bad on average.
To give a reasonable picture of how the onions looked in mid-June in recent years, a number of plots with the same soil type have been put in order for each harvest year. The first image starts with a few years back and runs through 2023. The caption of the image shows the place and date the photo was taken.
It is easy to see that the onions in Zeeland are significantly lagging behind in growth compared to previous years. A big difference can also be seen on the sandy soil in Wezup.
Jesse Torringa
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