Welcome to the Good Growing podcast. I am Chris Enroth, horticulture educator with University of Illinois Extension coming at you from Macomb, Illinois, and we have got a great show for you today. We are going on the road again. And this time, we are traveling all the way to the Southeast United States to a state called Georgia, where we are gonna talk with Ross Greene all about onions. But before we get to that and a specific type of onion, I am joined as always every single week by horticulture educator Ken Johnson in Jacksonville.
Chris Enroth: 00:38Hey, Ken.
Ken Johnson: 00:38Hello, Chris. Are you a fan of onions?
Chris Enroth: 00:42I I am a huge fan of onions. They are always in the pantry. They go in almost every dish that I make. Now, Ken, do you like onions?
Ken Johnson: 00:53I do like onions.
Chris Enroth: 00:55Okay.
Ken Johnson: 00:55And do do you do you eat them like an apple? I've heard of people doing that. Are you one of them?
Chris Enroth: 01:00I've tried that as a joke. It didn't end as well. Well, there was a lot of crying. But but... Yeah.
Chris Enroth: 01:08Yeah. I... I've tried to eat them as an onion, but I prefer to cook them first.
Ross Greene: 01:13Well, if you'd use Vidalia, you wouldn't have been crying.
Chris Enroth: 01:16That... Oh, that's very true. The sweetness of that onion is just incredible. So... But no.
Chris Enroth: 01:23I haven't done that yet. I I will say in research for this, I did come across some video or some, images of young lads in the nineteen seventies in Georgia just popping onions in their mouth. Like, oh, man. But, of course, we are also joined every single week by horticulture educator Emily Swihart in Milan, Illinois. Emily, welcome to the show.
Emily Swihart: 01:52Hi, guys. Good to see you. Man, I am excited for this episode. We... This has been a couple months in the making, and I've been looking forward to it, ever since we were out in another state, Colorado.
Emily Swihart: 02:04I love onions. It goes like onions, garlic, salt. I have to have all those as part of my meal. Otherwise, it's not a meal, it's a snack. So I'm excited to learn a little bit more and share it with everybody about a real sweet onion.
Chris Enroth: 02:21Yes. Well, let us bring in our special guest for today as we travel down to Georgia. So we are joined by Extension Ag and Natural Resources educator, Ross Greene, in Georgia. Ross, welcome to the show.
Ross Greene: 02:38Well, thanks for having me. Oh, every day I get to be on a podcast for people in Illinois.
Chris Enroth: 02:46We would love to have you more often too. We're just discussing your your pecan or pecan poster behind you, which we we all commented would be a great follow-up show with you. So, Ross, you... You're an ANR educator in Georgia and you serve multiple counties. So, tell us a bit about what you do in Georgia.
Ross Greene: 03:11So, I am a county extension agent and we have three program areas here in Georgia under the University of Georgia umbrella. We have our Ag and Natural Resources agents which I am in that section. We also have our four H youth program educators or agents and we have one of those here in our office and then we also have a family and consumer sciences sector of our extension programs here and we are an extension of the University of Georgia and basically, all of the research that comes out of UGA and the things that happen there. We are the local expert that allows people to be able to have a local expert here in their county.
Chris Enroth: 04:04I love how you still use the term agent. In Illinois, they they had us change over to educator, but I I talk with like, like, we live in a rural part of the state, I serve a rural part of the state. And when people ask me like, Oh, who am I? Why am I calling them? When they call the extension office, I said, Well, I'm an extension educator.
Chris Enroth: 04:24And they're like, Well, what's that? And I'm like, it's an agent. They're like, Oh, I get it now. I get it. It's like agent is this term that is like, still clinging on to the memory of a lot of people in my area.
Chris Enroth: 04:37So a lot of times I just say I'm an Extension agent, even though I'm told not to do so by campus.
Ross Greene: 04:44Well, we we actually have another position called an educator which is kind of like an agent but it's I guess a tier down. Sometimes when we have some of the larger programs especially with the four H and some of the ANR counties where they're more populated and you'll have, you know, more people, they will have a an educator kind of as a backup person that kind of helps assist with the programs and in the rural counties, we we don't get very many educators. So, we're pretty much considered agents but that's just what we've always been called. You know, we're still, you know, I I'm doing a running joke when I go and speak at some of these places like Rotary or you know, the the clubs in town that wants you to come and talk and you're like, yeah, I'm the I'm the guy that they refer to as the agent, the county agent, the the ag agent, the ANR agent, or the new Mike Dollar, which was my predecessor it was here for like twenty something years and everybody goes, he's the new Mike Dollar, you know, the the old agent. So, I mean, I still, I've been here for seven years and I still get called the the new the new agent.
Ross Greene: 06:04So,
Chris Enroth: 06:06Yep. I I think we've all been in that situation. We've we've we've all replaced somebody, and it's been many years, and we're still we're still new.
Ross Greene: 06:14Oh, yeah. I imagine I'll probably be nude until I'm getting close to retirement.
Emily Swihart: 06:20I've had friends say that to me that I knew in my previous life say like, oh, you're the new. I was like, gosh, you knew me before.
Ross Greene: 06:29So Exactly.
Chris Enroth: 06:32Yep. Yep. So... And and Ross, you you serve, you said Candler in Evans County. Can...
Chris Enroth: 06:38I think you said Southeast Georgia, but can you give us, like, a relative location to, like, maybe Savannah or Georgia, Atlanta?
Ross Greene: 06:47So Savannah, which is, you know, our Southeast corner of the state where the Port Of Savannah is, the city of Savannah. We are about 60 miles inland to the West of Savannah straight up I 16 and really when you come from Savannah, there's a lot of kind of coastal land and then it kind of transitions into a lot of flatwoods, mostly kind of pine land that's really not good for much but you know, forestry type things. Got some swampland and then, there's a lot of houses but then, once you get to Evans County, it's kind of the first county where we're far enough inland that the agriculture really begins. Everything closer toward the coast is a little too wet. So, once you get into Evans County and then Bullock County is directly north of us which is where Georgia Southern University is in Statesboro, Georgia.
Ross Greene: 07:50It's a pretty good sized university. They're they're directly above us. So, we're, like I said, we're about 60 miles from Savannah, inland, and then from where we are, the next few counties that you go basically west for about three or four counties over and then any of the ones that are kinda north or south of us are kind of in that Vidalia onion growing area. So, there's approximately about 13 counties that are considered to be where production any you can grow Vidalia onions anywhere in those counties And then there are seven counties that have a partial portion where it's just a little tiny section kinda close to a particular area of the county where they can grow Vidalia onions there. That area was kind of carved out because of our soil types.
Ross Greene: 08:44We have very very sandy soils and that has to do with some of the, you know, characteristics of the Vidalia onions. And we can go into that a little more in-depth in a few minutes.
Chris Enroth: 08:57Yeah. Yeah. And I think, like, your location in Georgia, I think, is what sort of set the stage for Vidalia onion. Being at the crossroads of so many big... There's so many cities kinda surrounding that that...
Chris Enroth: 09:11Those those counties. But I guess if we're talking Vidalia onions today, we gotta know what makes a Vidalia onion and a Vidalia onion. You wanna... I I feel like you go to a grocery store, and I hope to find Vidalia onions. That's what I'm shopping for.
Chris Enroth: 09:30I don't always see
Ross Greene: 09:31the only famous they're the only famous onion. You know? So we we we do have that going for us.
Chris Enroth: 09:37It's... People know this particular type of onion. So is it... Is Vidalia the variety or are there multiple varieties? Tell us what what is a Vidalia onion?
Ross Greene: 09:48So a Vidalia onion, it got started back in the 1930s, I want to say. And there were a few farmers over in that region that got some onions and grew them. And you know, we're expecting to be kinda, you know, hot and toll free like they would be with a lot of our onions and when they started getting growing em, they realized that they were sweet. They didn't have a real pungent, strong, you know, flavor to em. They were sweet and so, these guys started kinda trying to sell these onions and the growers were just happened to be near that Vidalia area and they started selling them at grocery stores and we're kinda calling them sweet onions and the reason that they're sweet is because our soils, we have very, very sandy soils.
Ross Greene: 10:39So, our sulfur does not build up in the soil and what happens is in the winter time, we receive a good bit of rain throughout the winter and so that rain keeps the sulfur flushed out and so the onions are not hot because of that. Most of the onions are a short day type onion and we kind of grow those in the winter time and it's one of those things that there's not really a particular to start with. There was not a particular type of onion that was considered a Vidalia. It was just the ones that were being grown in this region. Now that they have, you know, made it into a thing, it's copyrighted, trademarked, there are certain varieties now that you have to grow to be able to market it as a Vidalia onion.
Ross Greene: 11:33And I can go in some more detail about that in a little while. About why we we you know have to have a certain variety. But there are essentially Vidalia onion is usually kind of a round like a flat style what we call a a granite x type onion and it's usually a yellow onion. It can't be white or red. It's gotta be a yellow onion and usually there are some characteristics that we look for when we're evaluating different varieties.
Ross Greene: 12:09So we do research at our onion station. We have a dedicated onion station here right outside of the Vidalia area and we do onion research there. It's about a 75 acre small research farm that used to be a a old forestry nursery for the Georgia Forestry Commission and the forestry commission was going through budget cuts back in the late 80s and early 90s and the University of Georgia picked up that little bit of that little research station, the nursery, and they kind of rotated it in to be a research station for Vidalia onions and for other vegetables because we grow a lot of vegetables in this area. So we we evaluate anywhere from 40 to 50 different onion types or onion varieties, every year for our conventional tests. Now not all of those are Vidalia onions.
Ross Greene: 13:08Some of those will be some red varieties. We have
Ken Johnson: 13:11some
Ross Greene: 13:11whites. Some of them we've done some ones that were like processing for like shredding, for making, like relish or salsas or whatever, you know, just stuff you were gonna shred and make into kinda like a minced onion or even dehydrated onions. Those, we have some types that we grow for those and it's, it's not as a sweet of an onion, but it it makes just really big, huge onions. And we grow those and basically the yield, it doesn't matter how pretty they are. Vidalia onions, you know, have become popular and one of the things that the growers really strive for is very high quality.
Ross Greene: 13:53The water content in our onions is a little higher than some of the other onions you'll you'll get. So, it tends to be a little bit softer of an onion. So, they don't store quite as well. So, the growers have to be very very careful when they handle them. That is why they are majority, I would say about 95% of the Vidalia onions are, planted by hand, harvested by hand, everything's done by hand.
Emily Swihart: 14:21That's incredible. That's, like, very labor intensive to consider you're supplying the small group of counties is supplying the whole country with these Vidalia.
Ross Greene: 14:31Yeah. So we're we're doing, it's about 10 to 12,000 acres. And so it's relatively small, but we're able to supply the majority of the country. We're not able to do it year round, but what these growers have transitioned into is they're now coordinating with farms in Peru. And a lot of them have actually got independent growers that contract with them in Peru and so we actually harvest.
Ross Greene: 15:01We start harvesting in about mid April. Sometimes, you'll have a few come off in early April but we start harvesting early to mid April. We harvest all the way through May, and usually we're kind of finishing up right there at the end of May. And you want to be done by, like, third week of May most of the time. Well, all of those onions, we're harvesting them in that short window, and then we have to take them and put them in storage.
Ross Greene: 15:27Well, then we're packing all throughout the season. Well, usually, we start running out of onions around Labor Day. So, around Labor Day, you know, our Vidalia onions are running out and in an effort for growers to be able to keep their sheds going and not have to shut down when I was coming along in the late nineties, early two thousands, the growers did this seasonally. We just had Vidalia onions and then when you ran out around Labor Day, that was it. They shut the shed down.
Ross Greene: 15:54All the workers left and you know, you had temporary workers. Well, now, it's gotten so hard to have labor. They wanna keep their sheds running year round to be able to pay for upgrades to their coolers and upgrades to their equipment and things like that. And it's hard to pay for those things if you're only running the shed for four months out of the year. So what they've done is, Peru has kind of an opposite season from us, so they're harvesting onions in August and we're purchasing, they're purchasing or have contracted with farms in Peru, they're shipping those into the Port Of Savannah and then they're being trucked up here and then we package sweet Peru onions.
Ross Greene: 16:40And so in the later parts of the year, like now, when you go to the grocery store, you'll see, you know, a label that says Bland Farms or Schumann Farms, but it'll say Sweet Peru, onions on there instead of Vidalia sweets.
Emily Swihart: 16:57Okay. How do the flavor profiles compare between
Ross Greene: 17:01those similar. They're very similar.
Emily Swihart: 17:04Okay. And can you kind of... Like, you've mentioned they're very sweet and they're softer. Is there any other like notable characteristics of the Vidalia onion like when you're doing your like evaluations you talked about the field trials that you all do. Can you elaborate on like what characteristics you're looking for how you determine what is going to be used for Vidalia onion production versus some of those other uses.
Ross Greene: 17:28So if let... Let's say for instance a a seed... We have a seed breeder that has a, you know, onion variety and they want to get it to be marketed where they can sell it as a Vidalia onion variety. They'll have to bring it to us and we enter it into our variety test at the University of Georgia Station and it is tested for at least... Is evaluated for at least three years.
Ross Greene: 17:56And then after the third year of production, we'll take it to the the Vidalia Onion Committee which is kinda like our commodity commission that is regulated by the growers. They have a board and so the members of the board, we will say, okay, we've had this new variety. Let's call it strawberry just for, you know, reference. The new variety strawberry has, you know, presented, good. We've seen good yields out of it.
Ross Greene: 18:28So it's it's yielded well. We haven't had a lot of disease issues. It has had a good flavor profile because we also have, every variety gets tested for flavor and, pungency. The lab in Athens, spent a ten year period using a blind taste test panel of people to taste test all the onions, and they have now developed a computer model based off of three different acid factors in the onion that they are able to take a core and analyze those, acid, numbers and able to come up with a sweetness ranking based off of that. So then we take those onions and they rank them based on sweetness.
Ross Greene: 19:17So we're taking, you know, rankings for sweetness and for, you know, qualities in the field. And then we're also want onions that when they come out of the and we take them, they have a good color. They're not sunburnt. You know, sometimes you'll get one that's pretty good but when you go to harvest it, it'll turn real dark and dingy looking and you know, growers don't want that. You can't sell that.
Ross Greene: 19:42People are gonna they they don't wanna buy a ugly onion. They want it to be nice and pretty and bright and so, we we look at all of those things. I actually I actually try almost every one of the onions that comes across our belt like cut a slice out of them and taste them. We we I do that every year. I stand up on the grading line while we're running the varieties through.
Ross Greene: 20:06So we do our plots. They're like 30 foot long and, about six foot wide little beds. And we have, like, 250 ish plants in a bed, and we harvest all the bulbs in that bed, and then that goes into a bag and... Or, usually, it's two or three bags. But, anyway, so you take all those bulbs from that little plot, and we set it on a scale and weigh it and then we run it through our grading line.
Ross Greene: 20:32We stand there and physically grade out any ones that look diseased, have bad shape. You know, sometimes you'll get some onions that'll grow together, you know, flat sides. We'll cull those out. If you've got some diseased ones, we'll usually throw those out. You know, if you've got one that looks real sunburned, real bad, or it's got, you know, just some kind of quality problem splitting, We'll call all those out.
Ross Greene: 20:56Well, then, when once they do that, they go through a sizing chain and that separates them out into medium jumbos and colossals. So, colossals are your blooming onion, big sized ones And then, you know, our jumbos are what we want to have in the field and then our mediums are going to be a little smaller. And a large medium is still a good sized selling onion. You just don't get quite as much yield. So growers kind of want the onion, the percentages of the distribution, of the size distribution to be a large medium to a medium sized jumbo.
Ross Greene: 21:34That's what people want to buy in the grocery store. People in the grocery store don't wanna buy those big old honking onions and they don't store well. So you you... The growers can't really save those. Like, they have to sell those fresh market.
Ross Greene: 21:48So, you know, we actually do but we we weigh out each size and then each variety gets a percentage assigned to it so that the growers can look at a report that we give to them at the end of the year and that report has a list of all the varieties on there. It has taste and sweetness and quality rankings as far as taste. There's rankings as far as our field yields, percentage of calls, percentage of jumbo onions, percentage of mediums, and then the total yield and so the growers get to look at all of that and that those are, you know, we do that on about 50 different varieties every year and that gives them, you know, something to base their decisions off of because difference in variety can majorly affect the the yield And, you know, when you're dealing with onions, if it's a year where the price is good, you could talk about thousands of dollars per acre. You know, if you got a guy that, you know, makes 1,200, 1,300 bags per acre, which is a really good yield, you know, average is probably somewhere in the 700 to 50 bag range.
Ross Greene: 23:10When I say bag, that's like a 40 pound box. But if, you know, if they can make 1,200, you know, they can really make some money and especially in a year where you have good yield and then they also store well and then, you know, you have certain growers that they're growing for a specific customer, and that customer only wants mediums. You know? So you may plant a variety that has a high percentage of mediums, which are smaller onions, but that's what the grower wants or the buyer wants. So you can use our test to kinda look through there and see what you need.
Ross Greene: 23:47Anyway, so onion has to be grown in our test for three years before it can be considered a Vidalia onion. Once it's been through three years and we suggest to the the committee, this onion has the proper qualities that we think that a Vidalia onion should have. It's got the right look, shape. This one has a good storability. Y'all may wanna consider this one.
Ross Greene: 24:16And usually the growers are growing some in their fields as well and they're looking at them. And after we've done it three years and we think it's good on you and they agree, They'll vote on it, and they'll either vote it in to be where they can market it as. And then if you decide you wanna, you know, sell Vidalia onions, you've gotta grow one of those varieties that's on the list. There's about 25 to 30 of those.
Ken Johnson: 24:41So if you were to take one of those other... One of those varieties and grow them, like, in a heavier soil where you've got more sulfur, would they... They would be hot still? Would they get hot?
Ross Greene: 24:52Most likely, yes. So, like, you can take the same variety that we plant here and grow it in a very heavy clay soil, low sulfur, and, yes, it would be very different profile. And then, you know, if you've had a more arid, dry, type climate as well, that also will cause them to be higher in sulfur. The years that we have a dry year, last year, we had a very dry year and our onions were a little hotter than they typically are. But it was because we didn't have that rainfall to keep that sulfur flushed out of our soils.
Ross Greene: 25:32So, they were still sweet, but across the board, I felt like when I tried onions, even some of the ones that are typically our sweetest ones, they were a little hotter than they are on a normal year.
Ken Johnson: 25:49And these are all short day?
Ross Greene: 25:52Yes. Everything short day. Okay. We we usually start our production cycle. So, we start out from seed and we will plant the seed in what we call a seed bed or a transplant bed.
Ross Greene: 26:05So, basically, you're planting a really high population in a small area because the closer they are together, the more pushing power they have to be able to come up. So, we just basically string them out there almost like they're broadcast. They're really, really thick and so one acre of seed beds usually will transplant about 20 acres of onions in the field. So you'll you'll seed them, usually a little after Labor Day, kind of first to middle of September, use like a very tiny monosum, or a little, vegetable type planter, air planer, and the seeds are about the size of a pin, a ballpoint pinhead. Like they're very very tiny.
Ross Greene: 26:49And so we'll plant those in there. They'll be very very thick and it takes about ten days to get them up. So you're constantly watering two or three times a day if it's hot to get the seed up. And the worst thing that can happen to you is you have a huge rain because the seed beds are, like, the seed will just get washed away because they're literally planted directly on top of the ground. You only want just enough dirt to cover em up.
Ross Greene: 27:17So, I mean, we're talking less than a quarter inch deep. Anyway, if you can ever get em up and they get a little bit of root system on em, then, you're kind of good for a little while and we typically will fertilize em, you know, about every two weeks and you know, we'll go over em and you know, large farmer might have 20 or 30 acres of seed beds that's where his you know, seed beds are at and so you're carrying for that little small area. You you basically kinda baby em along and you grow them from mid September until about the first to the middle of of November. So, we're a little behind right now but usually, if we had some warm weather and we had plants, we might even have a guys planting probably next week. But it looks like we might be the first ones might be it may be the twentieth before we have any big enough to set.
Ross Greene: 28:18But usually, about middle of November, November 15 is kinda the magic day. And so what you do is you go in there, and they'll, you just pull the onions out of the ground, and they're, you know, maybe six inches tall, something like that. Some of them could be a little taller. Sometimes we'll mow them, mow the tops. But so you'll you'll go through the field ahead of the the planters, the the people that are planting and you have a a hole puncher and it goes on top of the bed and it has the pegs that are measured out how far apart you want them and it pokes a hole that's probably about big around as a broomstick end and it punches those little holes all the way through the field.
Ross Greene: 29:08And then you'll have crews that go through there with a handful of plants in their hand and they just stick a plant in every little hole. And so then you have a crew that are is at the seed beds. They're sitting there pulling them up and bundling them. You pull them up and bunch them and you put a rubber band around them in a bunch. And a lot of them will put them on like a flatbed trailer or school bus and they haul them to the fields and then they put them on the hole puncher and then they toss them out throughout the field.
Ross Greene: 29:37So, they just toss the little bundles out and then, there's just people, the HOA workers go through there and just pick em up a little handful and they shoot em in the ground on their hands and knees and they do that all the way through the field and a lot of times when you go by, there might be 100 people out there planting in one field.
Ken Johnson: 29:57Wow.
Chris Enroth: 29:57And Ross, why do they mow? Is that for reduced transplant shark... Shock?
Ross Greene: 30:05Some of that is for that. And then sometimes if the tops are really, really big, it's hard to plant them. If you have a more consistent size. But a lot of times, you know, if the plants are getting big, you'll mow them to try to slow those plants down and then, you know, it does help reduce the transplant shock a little bit. But yeah, you put them out there and there there is a little adjustment period where about seven to ten days, they kinda just sit there.
Ross Greene: 30:34And then depending on how cold it is or, you know, if we have a real cold spell and have frost and freeze come through, you know, they might sit there longer than that but eventually, you know, we'll we'll try to water em as soon as we can and try to close those holes up good and get everything sealed up and then they come right behind that and put out their their weed control. We usually, most of our weed control program on onions is strictly pre emergent. So, you get one big slug at planting and that's it. And then that's just gotta hold you to the end of the season. But we're growing, we're, we're, we're growing during the winter, so the weed pressure is not as high as it would be in the summer.
Ross Greene: 31:18You know, most of the days are 70 degrees and then, you know, we're in the fifties at night.
Chris Enroth: 31:26Mhmm. So you're fighting like henbit or chickweed like the cool season
Ross Greene: 31:31Weed, henbit, our our main issue is actually when we, wild radish is one of our big problems. So wild radish down here has gotten where it pretty much germinates year round, but we'll have a big flush in the spring. So, like, toward the end of our growing season, we'll get a big flush of wild radish, and that makes it difficult to get the onions plowed up. So... And then another problem we have is cut leaf primrose.
Ross Greene: 32:06It'll just make mats out there. But that usually doesn't get to be a huge issue until usually about in January, February is when it really starts to kinda go. And then March, when it warms up a little bit, that stuff will just get... It'll be as big as the onions. But it it it causes harvesting problems more than growing problems.
Ross Greene: 32:30So when we harvest harvest our onions, you kinda run like a plow underneath it, like an under blade that kinda clips the bottom roots, and and and it'll make everything drag up really bad.
Chris Enroth: 32:43I'm kinda stuck on... I'm back on the the variety testing and breeding. Sure. Yeah. Yeah.
Chris Enroth: 32:51Guys are like doing the opposite of what the chili heads are doing. They're trying to get the hottest pepper, and you guys are trying to get the sweetest onion.
Ross Greene: 32:59That's right.
Chris Enroth: 33:00So we call people breeding chilies, chili heads or do you... Is there a name for onion breeders? I don't know. Sweet sweet peas or I I don't know what you'd call them. Sweet onion or I'm not sure.
Ross Greene: 33:12Not not not really. We don't really have a lot of onion breeding that goes on here. Okay. Majority of, like, the onion seed production is in Washington state. But we actually have just recently hired a plant breeder because one of our main issues in onions is a bacteria called, Pantoya, which is, what we call center rot.
Ross Greene: 33:41And it is a huge issue for us because if we get center rot, a lot of times, the the guys clipping it don't know. So, they'll just clip the tops off. When it goes in the bin, the onion looks fine but they'll be a it it starts rotten in the center. Well, you put em in storage and you gotta pull that out and then you've got a bunch of rotten onions in the bin and it really hurts you because you've carried those onions that whole time and then you've lost them after you've put all that money into them. And so that's one of our big, you know, challenges.
Ross Greene: 34:18And one of our our pathologist, our disease pathologist, did a study, couple years ago and he planted like a thousand different seed variety of onions of all different kinds. Long day, short day, anything. And then they went out there and mixed up a broth of bacteria and just sprayed all over them and tried to see if there was anything that lived. And they got one onion that managed to not have damage. It's like a a long day onion with some odd shape that like no one would ever grow for, you know, production wise.
Ross Greene: 34:58But they're gonna take that and try to use it as a base and breathe that resistance in to some of our favorable lines and try to get a resistant variety. Because right now, we don't have really any the the only, you know, things that we've been able to do as far as managing it is more like cultural and you know, sanitation practices where we kind of, you know, do things to reduce the risk. And we've done a lot of research on that at the farm for different cultural practices that you can do to reduce your risk but you're never going to fully, you know, get rid of it. And, you know, sometimes it depends on the weather of the year you have a lot more disease pressure. It's actually vectored by thrips.
Ross Greene: 35:50So, tobacco thrips and western flower thrips are our main vectors and we can have large issues with them transmitting the or the bacteria. So, we have come up with several methods and one of the methods that we have come up with is a couple MCs and treatments with a kind of a long residual insecticide to try to keep the thrips away. And that has been effective. We do like a, I want to say it's radiant at a certain part time in in the growing season and that gives us a couple weeks suppression and it doesn't really harm any of our beneficials. So, that's been real good.
Ross Greene: 36:40It was just like a straight pyrethroid spray there for a long time. It was kind of just a broad insecticide. Now that we've learned more about it, we we've went to some more of these systemic, you know, more targeted approach and we've of decided that we are getting better results out of that and, you know, less harmful to our beneficials, which is good.
Ken Johnson: 37:04Are there any other issues besides like the center rot and thrips?
Ross Greene: 37:08Yeah. So Burkholderia is another, another, bacteria that we have issues with. We don't have as much problem with Burt Haldaria here as they do in, like, Washington State, California, and some of those places. We're, you know, it it kinda depends on the year. Some years we have problems with it and that's called either sour skin or slippery skin.
Ross Greene: 37:35And usually when you get that, you get like hot weather and rain at the same time and environmental conditions kind of get right. A lot of times that'll be kind of toward the end of our harvest season when we get issues with sour skin and slippery skin. So, it's an issue but it's one of those things that, you know, some years it's a bigger issue than others. It's less predictable, but they have actually done some research where, they found an organic, fumigant that they recently tested that, is the only thing that has shown any kind of, effectiveness to this Burkholderia in the soil. So they're doing some more research with this product.
Ross Greene: 38:25I think they said they just got it labeled or, or I was about to, but it's like a derivative from, some wildflowers or something that, they're fumigating the soil with and it has a very effective at lowering the amount of Burkholderia in the soil. So, when you don't have as much of the pathogen in the soil, you know, that greatly limits the amount you're going to have. So, that's real interesting research that has been come out here lately on that front.
Emily Swihart: 39:02Anything else on that on, you know, pests and disease issues? I do want to go back to harvest, so I just want to make sure that.
Ross Greene: 39:09Okay, sure. Yeah. Pests and diseases, we have a few random things every once in a while. Downy mildew can be a problem for us, but it's kind of one of those things you've got to have the the weather conditions and so we actually have a some sentinel plots that we have around the state that we kind of look for. We actually have some sentinel plots planted outside of the Vidalia growing area.
Ross Greene: 39:40Kind of some on the Georgia Alabama border at some of our other research stations will have, you know, a little small sentinel plot there. We do kind of at some of our research stations down in southern part, kind of down the Florida border. We've got some sentinel plots there to try to monitor because usually if we can intercept it there, we usually have about a week before it hits us in in our Vidalia. So, a lot of times that may give us time to get a spray on to have some protection But we have a model that usually tells us when the conditions are favorable for development and usually when the model goes off, we usually send out an alert to all the growers and recommend for them to start doing a preventative spray. And that has been fairly effective.
Ross Greene: 40:33You know, we still have some places where we get it and some fields that develop it worse than others, but that has been relatively effective. We, remember one time, it's probably been fifteen or twenty years ago when I was coming along when we really had a huge outbreak of downy mildew and we lost like the whole crop. And, I mean the the yields were very, very poor. I mean, it it really hurt. But we, have tried to, monitor that and I think, you know, we've learned more about the disease and the ways to monitor it.
Ross Greene: 41:10So, you know, we've got preventative measures, but at the same time, nothing's a 100%.
Chris Enroth: 41:17But it sounds like, so like the downy mildew, that's a field issue, But the slippery skin or the center rot, are you trying, you're working really hard to prevent like storage rots?
Ross Greene: 41:28Yeah, so it happens in the field but usually it affects us kind of there once we're, you know, have harvested. Sometimes the sour skin and slippery skin, we can know that we've got it in the field and we might not be able to harvest them. Like, we might just have to, you know, call the insurance and say, look, we've developed this disease. We can't harvest, you know, weather conditions have caused it. There's nothing we can do.
Ross Greene: 41:57But we try to do preventative treatments for some of that, but there's nothing that really has a lot of effectiveness to it. But yeah, usually it's either like right at harvest time or it's, you know, we're noticing it after we've harvested them. Definitely with the Pantoya too.
Emily Swihart: 42:19Let's go back to talking about harvest. So you just kind of mentioned a little bit how you can see at the time of harvest some of those, storage rots. Can you talk through just like the process of, like harvesting? You said that that you're undercutting the roots and then Yeah. They were hand harvesting.
Emily Swihart: 42:37I just kind of go through...
Ross Greene: 42:38Usually, so usually once we get close to harvest we're kind of cutting back on our water a little bit. We don't want to get them to, you kind of want to dry them out some, but then once you get to that point, usually around mid April, there's two types of diggers that we use. The more conventional or the older style ones is just a straight under blade, and a lot of them had like a chain or a cable that would kind of drag over the tops and lay the tops over. The newer style ones actually have a chain system, and it looks similar to, almost like a peanut plow. It's got a big blade that goes under the onions and then once it does, it kinda lifts them up onto a chain and they kinda ride up and then they kinda go back down.
Ross Greene: 43:28The company that makes them is called a top air chain digger and they they the the onions ride up on it and it shakes some of the dirt off of em and it just kinda lays em right back on top. The ones with the under plow, sometimes it doesn't get them all the way up out of the dirt and so, you know, it it doesn't do quite as good a job and actually, one of the research tests that we did, our onion station manager did a test and I want to say he said that you could reduce the center rot and some of the slippery skin, sour skin disease issues by like nine percent by doing that practice. So, that was one way that we were able to justify growers to say, well, over time, you can pay for, you know, one of the more expensive diggers if you have enough acres and they're they're substantially more expensive. So, a lot of our smaller growers, you know, aren't able to make those work but the larger ones with more acres were able to justify, you know, we're gonna save more onions and have less disease by using this newer style digger.
Ross Greene: 44:41So, once you get the onions dug, they'll usually lay out in the field depending on the variety, three to seven days drying, and some of that depends on the weather conditions. You know, if it's hot and dry and sunny, they'll dry down faster. But usually, so the onions will sit there on top of the ground and usually about a day before they start getting ready to harvest, you'll start hauling in, what we call macro bins. They're like a three by three by three or three by four size bin. I think some of them are like 38 inches bins or 34 inches bins.
Ross Greene: 45:27But they're the big hard plastic vegetable bins. You know, they they do watermelons in a lot of times. So, we'll take those and they carry into the field and they'll just go set those bins out all over the field. Lot of times, they'll drive they'll actually take a little crew and they'll they'll go through and they'll move all the onions over or harvest a road all the way through the field and they'll drive through there with the trucks and then they'll throw the bins out. And then the harvesting crew will come the following day and you'll have six school buses pull up with people and they'll get off and they just get out there with some hand shears.
Ross Greene: 46:13Looks like there's old type shears that they used to cut the wool with. They're we call them onion shears but you pick the onion up and you clip the the top off that goes on the ground and then the good onion goes in a bucket and usually, we'll have some small buckets that they clip into and then when you fill your bucket up, you jump it into the big bins. And now, they have QR codes that they put on the bins and like, I wanna say that they have QR codes for the guy that's doing the clipping and like when he fills up his little bin, he scans a QR code or something that they keep up with how he's, you know, who's done what? Because they get paid by how many they clip. Like, it's by the bin.
Ross Greene: 47:03Uh-huh. I don't know how many, how much it is. I can't remember but they they actually get, I mean, I'm sure there's some kind of hourly fee but like they actually get paid by how much they clip. So, like these people will get out there and they're just running, clipping these things and I was talking to one that helped us on the farm years ago and I asked him, I was like, well, how much money can you make in a day clipping those things? And you know, this was probably ten or fifteen years ago.
Ross Greene: 47:29He was like, oh, he said, oh, I can make $200 a day. He said, I just really, I just cut fast. He's like, you know, the faster you cut, the more you do, the more money you make. It sounds like that, you know, some of them actually make decent money but they work hard. So, anyway, those bins will get filled up and then they sit in the field and then you'll have another crew that comes around once they've harvested the field and they'll have like a forklift on tracks, kinda like a skid steer and it'll have forks on it and then they bring flatbed trailers with semis and they pick those up and set the bends on the flatbed trailer too high and then they strap em down and then they go to the the onion shed.
Ross Greene: 48:18And then these onion sheds are so advanced compared to what they were twenty years ago when I came along. I mean, it is unreal. We went and toured one at Bland Farms earlier in the year and so the the greater that they have now, it it has cameras all over it and when the onions come under there, you know, the onions are every individual onion sits in a cup and the little cup weighs every onion and then it takes a picture. I think he said that every onion gets, like, 80 pictures taken. And it goes under the grater, and it and it scans like...
Ross Greene: 49:00It it weighs the onion. It tells, like, by size. And so, if there's, if they're good onions and it goes under there and it needs to go on whatever line or the parameters they set, it kicks it off onto that line and then it goes into the proper box. If it's a bad onion, it kicks it off on, goes into a coal line and you know, if they have jumbos go in one box, colossals go in another box, and I mean, they're going through there so fast. When I was coming along, it was all done by hand.
Ross Greene: 49:38You'd have 20 people standing on the line, standing there picking the bad ones out. But what they were telling us is that the amount of money that they were saving on giving away onions is paid for the grader. So, he said, used to, when you had a 40 pound box of onions, you had to put about 41 pounds in there to make sure that you had a 40 pound box. You had to give yourself enough leeway because you couldn't take a a box of onions and sell them to a customer and if it didn't have 40 pounds in it, that's false advertising and they get in trouble. So, he said, they were always packing extra weight to make sure they had enough to guarantee a 40 pound box.
Ross Greene: 50:25Well, then he said, now, with these advanced graders, he said, they can get it within a quarter of a pound. So, we said, we're not giving away three quarters of a pound of onions anymore per box and he said, you know, over time, he said, that has really added up to substantial savings for them.
Emily Swihart: 50:46Well, that's, I didn't expect that. That's incredible. I'd love to see that.
Ross Greene: 50:51It's so interesting.
Emily Swihart: 50:52When I asked about Harvest, that's that's incredible. The technology that went into that.
Ross Greene: 50:57So so anyway it goes through and some of them are shipped out fresh market so they'll go into you know boxes and get packed and go to stores. Every store wants it packed a different way. Everybody's got, you know, some stores want em in a bag. Some stores want em in a big box and bags. Some stores want em in, you know, three pound bags and some want five pound bags and so like every store has their way they want it done and so like if you go to Sam's, you know, they're either in a like a three pound or a five pound bag but then they're in one of those big like pallet sized cardboard boxes.
Ross Greene: 51:39But then if you go to some of the smaller grocery stores, they want them in, you know, boxes, some places sell 40 pound boxes outright. So, you know, he said it's very challenging to keep all the customers happy because everybody wants it packed a different way. But, anyway, if it doesn't go into, you know, a a customer order right away, then it goes into a bin and, will go into storage or, goes into a dryer. So a lot of times, they'll send them into a dryer, and it goes in the drying room for a couple days. And the old style dryers were just a big, like, insulated room.
Ross Greene: 52:25Well, then you would move them out of the dryer and take them into a different room that was the cooler. Well, now they're building them where it's a dryer and a refrigerator all in one unit. So, they dry em and then they don't have to move em out. They just swap everything around and then they start cooling them down and they don't have to unload the the room anymore. So, it's a dryer and a refrigeration unit all in one room now and you'll go in there and I mean, they'll have these things stacked a 100 foot tall in there.
Ross Greene: 53:02And, I mean, there's thousands of those boxes in there.
Emily Swihart: 53:07That's incredible.
Chris Enroth: 53:08I'd love to check out the onion, sheds and then go up to, like, Wenatchee, Washington, check out the apple storage up there and just compare. I'm... I wonder if they use a lot of similar technology. It... It's like...
Chris Enroth: 53:21Like a similar so thing.
Ross Greene: 53:23I know a lot of our a lot of our first onion, grower... Like, graters and sizers were kinda based off of citrus graters. I wouldn't think there'd be a whole lot of difference. It's probably a lot of same concepts. Well,
Chris Enroth: 53:43Ross, I've been to Georgia a couple times. And the thing I like, I like to turn on the local news when I'm somewhere. I feel like every time I turn on the local news, they're talking about peaches. It's never good news at peaches in Georgia. They talk about declining crops and climate change.
Chris Enroth: 54:02So I'm just curious, with Vidalia onions, is there any risk of changing weather patterns where you might have issues?
Ross Greene: 54:11We we haven't seen any, so far. We we grow onions pretty much in the same fields almost year after year. Some of these onions have been grown in the same fields for ten or twelve years straight. As far as peaches go, our area don't don't do where we are. It's a little too warm.
Ross Greene: 54:36So, lot of the peaches and the apples need to have certain amount of chill hours and to get some of the better varieties that are more what consumers would want. You've gotta have a little bit more cold and we don't have enough cold here in this part of the state and then there are some varieties that you can grow that actually do better with less chill hours that they grow kind of like closer down to the Florida line or like Northern Florida that do well. But what happens there with our area is we get enough chill hours for those and they break bud and then we get a late frost. And we've had a lot of late frost here lately that have been knocking the blooms off of our, our peaches. And our blueberry growers, that's a big deal just south of us, they're having a lot of issues with that too, but a lot of them have frost protection that they run over the top of their tree, their bushes just to try to keep the frost off of them.
Ross Greene: 55:42And it's become a real challenge. I know, peaches have been tough, but a lot of the peach production has really moved to South Carolina. They have a lot of production up there. And I mean West Georgia over there kind of has some peach production, but we've just gotten where, you know, it's difficult to grow them here, at least in our part of the state. Like we, you might have some peaches just in some of these little farm stands and stuff where people have these little roadside stands but a lot of them, the trees are just there for show.
Ross Greene: 56:18Like, yeah, they're gonna have a few trees but, you know, they're they're they're buying peaches from before the end of the year. You know, you've got some where people go out there and you pick them a little bit but, you know, they're they're they're buying peaches from other parts of the state to get them through the rest of the year. But as far as onions right now, I don't think we have anything that we're concerned about. You know, really, really, really cold weather can, give us some problems. If it gets down below about 20 to 18 degrees, we start getting a little concerned.
Ross Greene: 56:55You know, if we get down around 14 or 15 for very long, we can have some damage but that's usually few and far between. Most of the time, we get mid low 20s is about as cold as we get here for an extended period of time.
Emily Swihart: 57:14Okay.
Ross Greene: 57:14And the onions usually tolerate that pretty well.
Emily Swihart: 57:18So you'll stick with the onions. No peaches. We're gonna we're gonna stick with the Vidalia onions. Okay. Well, in your area.
Emily Swihart: 57:27So you talked a little bit about selections and how, like, you were evaluating different varieties, any, like, interest or motivation in improving, make... Making improvements to the onions that you are selecting that are gonna be then, grown as Vidalia onions, or is it just... It's perfection now? Like, we've reached perfection, and we're just gonna keep doing what we're doing.
Ross Greene: 57:55There there... There's constantly new ones being released, and we're constantly evaluating new releases. And a lot of times there's a new release that, you know, has an attribute that we want that they've been working towards. But I would say we've got a pretty good representation of varieties right now. But most of the bright, the breeding comes from private industry.
Ross Greene: 58:20So, you know, they've gotta see an opportunity for sales and growth for a, you know, new variety to come. You know, the ones that we're, you know, trying to develop through UGA, the disease resistant ones, most likely will get it to a certain point and then, I'm sure it'll probably get incorporated into some other breeding programs but we're, the only thing we're really shooting for, like I said, is that that disease resistance. That's the big deal. But it's got to be disease resistant and have good quality. Vidalia onions are, you know, the only famous onion and the growers really pride themselves on high quality and that's what gets them to bring a higher price.
Ross Greene: 59:06That's how they're able to sell them for, you know, a regular onion from just anywhere doesn't bring near the amount of what a Vidalia does in the grocery store. So, they really pride themselves on quality. And there's a lot of, you know, between the growers, everybody really keeps themselves in check that we're putting out a quality product. And if they find out that somebody's, you know, selling some subpar stuff or they're not doing things, sometimes you might get a little little talking to from your neighbor or from the people on the committee. You're not, we're not going to put out substandard product.
Emily Swihart: 59:48Yeah.
Ross Greene: 59:49And it's kind of regulated. I mean, at the end of the day, it's regulated through the Department of Ag, but, also the growers themselves pretty well regulate it. You know, if it's not good quality, they're not going to send it out. And you know, everybody has the mistakes or things that happen but you know, they always make sure that, you know, that they make it right or whatever they need to do but Vidalia onions, the growers that are are fortunate enough to be part of our growers, they are, they are very elite. I mean, these guys are, they are paying attention to the most up to date technology.
Ross Greene: 01:00:30We've got guys that are using laser weeders now to weed the onions, because they're trying to increase their yields and they're trying to use less, herbicides. The laser weeders have been very effective. They're not the answer to everything because the speed of them, But when we compare, when we couple them in with our herbicide programs, you can you can go in and get the escapes and you can greatly reduce the weed pressure in your fields and increase your onion yields, your quality, And, so we, I mean, we've got guys that got those. We've been doing a lot of research with these, precision herbicide sprayers where it has like an AI camera and it only shoots the herbicide right where the weeds are and we're not putting it on the plants. So there's a lot of research going into that.
Ross Greene: 01:01:27I know that they're constantly developing new, versions of these laser weeders and we're we're trying the new drive or what we're going for right now is to try to get where we can go to direct seeded. So where we see directly in the field and then be able to grow onions that way because we could cut out so much labor but we haven't been able to get the quality and the consistency of product that the growers hold their standard to. And so, you know, they're they're very hesitant to jump out there and do that until we can get those. And we're we're we're starting to get some technology to help us get there but I think we're still we may still be, you know, ten years away from that. You know, we're we're looking at transplanters to try and they're just so slow.
Ross Greene: 01:02:20Like, they do a good job but it's just so slow but, you know, getting help from the H2A program sometimes can be a challenge. You know, we'll have guys ready to plant and their crew gets held up because of some paperwork or whatever and you know, they might be sitting on their hands for a week waiting on their harvest crew to get here and if you lose a week during harvest season, you know, we're really about a six to eight week harvest window and if you lose a week, that's a big deal. So, you know, anything that we can do with we've been looking at some robotic harvesters that or or more mechanical type harvesters and, you know, we're trying to learn about those. Some other precision ag things that we're looking into is doing some like yield estimation and scouting and things like that using some of the drones and the AI like models. And and there's I think there's some good research coming out of that.
Ross Greene: 01:03:23I just don't think they're quite there yet but it's coming. Our precision ag guys really working hard on trying to get what we can estimate yield, and that would really help some of our guys where they're trying to decide how much onions they have, if the onions they have planted are going to be enough to cover their, you know, their customer orders, especially in a year where you've got a lot of damage or your onions are not yielding as well from disease, you may want to go and buy some from another grower. So, you can say, well, looks like we're going to be short. I'm going to need to go buy 200 acres of onions to keep my customers happy. So, then, you're starting to go and find some other growers that might have some surplus or extras and things that you might could buy some from to fill those orders.
Ross Greene: 01:04:18And sometimes, you know, you just may not have enough by days. You may have to supplement with some of these. You may bring in some Peru's a little early to try to fill in, you know. You want to sell as much Vidalia's as you can, but.
Emily Swihart: 01:04:34Yeah, being so limited to where you can grow Vidalia onions does pose a challenge. I can see that being, I think growers and consumers we would need to understand that especially with like that price fluctuation. Know this is there's... There are, environmental conditions that affect, you know, like, here in Illinois, like, what we're getting. And so I really appreciate you sharing, like, that perspective because it does...
Emily Swihart: 01:05:00You know, you you go grocery shopping weekly and you see the prices kinda fluctuate. And then I I
Ross Greene: 01:05:07Well freight freight's been killing us. Know, you're thinking all Vidalia onions come from right here. And if we ship them to California or Illinois or New York or wherever they come from, like the freight is really hurting. It's eating into, you know, and I mean growers don't want to have to go up on their costs or but, know, at some point some of that's got to get passed on to the consumer.
Emily Swihart: 01:05:30Yeah. Yeah. Yes. It does. I...
Emily Swihart: 01:05:34So thank you for that insight because I do think in sharing, you know, this process, sharing your knowledge about, you know, Vidalia onion, production does make it more informed consumers. And so I I appreciate all of that. Well we're coming up on our time together. Is there anything we missed? Oh go ahead Chris.
Chris Enroth: 01:05:55Oh no go ahead. Ross was talking about consumers and I'm just getting really excited for our our transitioning into the the soup talk because I feel like we can really tie in Vidalia onion with with soup. But, yeah, Ross, if you have anything else you wanted to any, icing on the cake so to speak. Before we did go into soup.
Ross Greene: 01:06:18I think I'm about covered it if unless y'all have, any other questions. You know, I think we went through most of the talking points that we kind of had.
Ken Johnson: 01:06:30So.
Ross Greene: 01:06:32So, if you're ready to transition into soup, I'm all I'm all for it.
Chris Enroth: 01:06:36Let's do it. Like like an onion, We this is a podcast inside a podcast. It's just layers here. It's soup talk. So Ross, we Emily shared some links with us.
Chris Enroth: 01:06:50So the the association of Vidalia Onion Growers Association, they have some amazing looking recipes on their website and a couple of soup recipes I am definitely gonna try. But I guess, Ross, do you like onions? You say you try them all. Do you enjoy it? Do you like em?
Ross Greene: 01:07:09I I really do. Okay. Some of them I enjoy more than others. But I I went through a period where I couldn't eat onions for a while. I had acid reflux real bad for several years.
Ross Greene: 01:07:22And they went in a period where I couldn't even eat them and now I've gotten back to where I'd say in the last seven or eight years, I can eat onions again and I love em. So, I I put em in pretty much anything I can put them in. But as far as soup, so I'm really big into...
Chris Enroth: 01:07:43Nope. We lost him.
Emily Swihart: 01:07:44Oh, shoot.
Ross Greene: 01:07:46Sorry about that. Lost a little of that there for a few minutes. Oh,
Chris Enroth: 01:07:51alright. We... You you had us on a cliffhanger, Ross. Yeah. You...
Chris Enroth: 01:07:56We did... We heard everything except for what soup it was that you are really into. So I'm I'm, like, waiting with bated breath right now. Like, what what soup is it? What is it?
Ross Greene: 01:08:09So I I really like seafood and so I really really enjoy crab stew. I I usually make, you know, some at home. Any any kind of seafoods type stew, but usually, I'll put some, you know, crab meat and some potatoes in there and, crab. Sometimes, I'll do like a seafood type chowder and we'll put some shrimp in there and, you know, add... Sometimes we'll throw some corn, maybe a little bacon.
Ross Greene: 01:08:43Just depends on kinda, you know, the mood. I really like to do that type variation, and then I also enjoy a good gumbo, and I mean, like a real one. And I will make some myself every once in a while. I kinda learned how to do that when I was out in Louisiana, and it it if I go out that way, I will try to get one, you know, from there but a lot of times I have to make one myself because a lot of people don't really know how to get the taste just right. I don't know.
Ross Greene: 01:09:14If you if you've never had it, you don't know what you're missing, but once you've had it, you're spoiled. And, the best gumbo usually comes from a place that has a seafood market on one side and a restaurant on the other side of the same building. If you ever go out there.
Chris Enroth: 01:09:34That's good to know. The the Vidalia Onion website, they have a Vidalia onion gumbo with potato salad and I I noticed with gumbo, you gotta start with the dark roux which I don't think people do that often. And here, they're talking about if you want this to be authentic, you gotta start with a dark roux to to get going.
Ross Greene: 01:09:54So if
Chris Enroth: 01:09:55you want it to eat,
Ross Greene: 01:09:56you you can use a little bit of the nana's helper, the old kitchen bouquet in there. I learned that from some of the the Cajuns out there that was like, well, you know, this is how you're supposed to do it, but if you don't wanna stand there and stir your roux for forty five minutes, which is what you gotta do to get a good brown roux. Unless you're, I've watched, cooking with, Bruce, the guy from, the the alligator show. What's what's the name of that? Swamp, people.
Ross Greene: 01:10:29On people. Yep. Yeah. The guy that wears the overalls with the the bandana. Have you ever seen him?
Ross Greene: 01:10:36He's kinda real husky guy. His name's Bruce. He has a cooking channel and I saw him make a roux the other day and he teed it on a black stone and he didn't put any oil in with the flour. He put the dry flour on top of the black stone and toasted it dry and then he scooped it up and then made the roux. Woah.
Ross Greene: 01:10:59I was like, man, that takes some talent to do that because he,
Chris Enroth: 01:11:02I don't think I can that. He
Ross Greene: 01:11:04did it in a relatively short time but he was he was saying that like you gotta keep moving it around so you don't burn it.
Chris Enroth: 01:11:11Yeah.
Ross Greene: 01:11:11And I mean, that's the secret, that's the secret when you're making a roux regardless but like, if you wanna make a true, dark, brown, roux, you just gotta sit there and stir and stir and stir and when I was down there, all the Cajuns, you you had to learn that anything that you do is gonna involve some kind of libation and so they're they're just gonna, you know, basically say, you just have you a nice couple of drinks right there while you're stirring your your soup and... To make your roux. Mhmm.
Emily Swihart: 01:11:53That's alright.
Chris Enroth: 01:11:53Maybe on a cold winter day. Yeah. There's nothing else
Ross Greene: 01:11:56going Mhmm. And they they used to make, jambalaya down there, and, they would they would quantify the jambalaya by... They would say, well, how much did you make? And everyone of them had a had a little mini pot that they would make a small batch that would take like a one pound bag of rice and then they would have one that would take a five pound bag of rice and a 25 pound bag of rice And I had one of them that had a pot that was so big that it could do a 50 pound bag of rice. They would they would take it to those festivals and cook and, like, serve it to people at...
Ross Greene: 01:12:34And, like, I mean, the pot was ginormous.
Chris Enroth: 01:12:37Mhmm.
Emily Swihart: 01:12:38You need a team to carry that.
Ross Greene: 01:12:41They did. They would. There would be several of them. The the three or four of them. And they had what they would stir it with looked like a boat paddle.
Chris Enroth: 01:12:51Maybe it was.
Emily Swihart: 01:12:52Do you know that it wasn't?
Ross Greene: 01:12:55Well, I mean, it it was stainless steel. So it... I mean, it it would look like it was... But, I mean, it was the size of a boat paddle.
Ken Johnson: 01:13:04Excellent.
Emily Swihart: 01:13:05That's awesome. Well, I'm jealous that you have access to, like, really fresh good seafood. Like, that crab soup or stew sounds amazing.
Ross Greene: 01:13:14Yeah. So we we do have... You know, the Georgia Coast is only about an hour from here. So we we are able to get seafood pretty pretty good. And the Georgia shrimp are excellent.
Ross Greene: 01:13:25Very very good. We we pride ourselves on our shrimp. It's not we don't have a real big coastline but the the little area there especially down around the Brunswick and Jack Island, Saint Simons Island area. Some really good seafood down that way. Mhmm.
Chris Enroth: 01:13:41I I've been to St. Simon. I've stayed on Little St. Simon Island too. That is a that is a trip to go out there.
Ross Greene: 01:13:48Yeah. It's really pretty. That old natural coastline. You know, it's very, very pretty.
Emily Swihart: 01:13:53Yeah. And
Ross Greene: 01:13:56now it's sweet potato season down here too. You know, we're harvesting sweet potatoes right now. So if you need anything to go with your your pecans on top of your, sweet potato. We we do a nice, sweet potato souffle where you put brown sugar and butter and pecans, and you make a candy top that goes on top of your, sweet potatoes. It's very good.
Emily Swihart: 01:14:24You guys, so I'm a Midwesterner.
Ross Greene: 01:14:27I could talk about cooking I could talk about cooking food all day long because I love to cook. So
Emily Swihart: 01:14:32Mhmm. Well, I I was just gonna say I'm a Midwesterner, born and raised. Been here my whole life except for a short stint out in Kansas, but I think I might... I I should have been a southerner. All of this sounds so good.
Ross Greene: 01:14:44We're we're serious about our food, and, you know, we've got all the chicken down here that you could ever want. Georgia Georgia is number one in the nation in poultry. So when I go to the kids classes and I do some of these little, you know, ag little lessons in the classes, A lot of the things I'll do is I'll, you know, talk to the kids about Georgia and how important agriculture is to the state, and it's our number one industry. And then I always ask them, well, what's the biggest, you know, industry in Georgia as far as farming goes? And, of course, they'll all raise their hand and say cotton or peanuts or pecans because those...
Ross Greene: 01:15:22I mean, we're the number one producer of peanuts, but their... The acreage is not all that substantial And and, you know, the dollars wise, but I'll always tell them, it's dino chicken nuggets. You know, I have a little picture of the little dinosaur chicken nuggets, and the kids will all go, what? And then, you know, we explain to them that, you know, chicken that, you know, chicken nuggets come from chickens, and, you know, you just blow their mind when they realize that, you know, chicken nuggets just don't come from McDonald's?
Emily Swihart: 01:16:02We're learning things every day here.
Chris Enroth: 01:16:05Well, guys, I just had a lousy ham sandwich for lunch. I'm starving now. I'm like, I could eat. Yeah. I could eat right now.
Chris Enroth: 01:16:13So we might have to cut it right there. But,
Ross Greene: 01:16:17this Well, y'all make sure you come to the NACAA in 2028. We're gonna have down in Atlanta. So we'll get some Vidalia we'll have some Vidalia onions, and we'll we'll even see if we can get some seafood up there.
Chris Enroth: 01:16:33I'm putting on the calendar. Ross, that that was a lot of great information about Vidalia onions. That That might have been the most delicious sounding Soup Talk episode we've ever done. I can't wait to give some of these I'm gonna do this gumbo here. I'm found on the Vidalia site.
Chris Enroth: 01:16:56Ross, thank you so much for joining us today. I'm sure you're not busy at all as you're preparing for planting onions and you're harvesting sweet potatoes. I mean, it sounds like November is a very busy month for you.
Ross Greene: 01:17:08We we stay pretty busy here almost year round, just because we have a lot of seasonal vegetables on top of our traditional, row crops and cattle and, pecans. You know, we have a lot of watermelons here. Our onions is a big deal in this part of the, you know, neck of the woods. And we've got lots of other odds and end vegetables, you know, cabbage and collards and greens and things like that this time of the year. So we're we're staying pretty busy most of the time.
Chris Enroth: 01:17:41Sounds amazing.
Ross Greene: 01:17:44We don't get snowed in like y'all do for months at the time, you know?
Chris Enroth: 01:17:48That's true. I I... We do get to not swap mosquitoes for a little It's it's down to about a month and a half now. But
Ross Greene: 01:17:56Well, we're down below the gnat line too, so you even get gnats when you come down here too.
Chris Enroth: 01:18:02Oh, I love... Yeah.
Ross Greene: 01:18:03In Georgia, there's a there's a magical magical line line about about halfway halfway to to the the state, state, and and we we we... If you go, below that, you get gnats. So all the northern people from the northern portion of the state will come down here and they just go, oh my god. What are these little bugs? And little gnats just like following your eyes and your nose and they're they're terrible.
Ross Greene: 01:18:22But, we're we're just kinda like, what what are you talking about? We're just over here, you know, eating them because we don't even hardly notice it anymore because... But my my wife's got some family in the northern part of the state when they come down here. They just get so frustrated with the gnats. They don't bite.
Ross Greene: 01:18:39They just, like, try to fly in your eye and your nose and your ear, and they're very aggravating.
Chris Enroth: 01:18:45Free protein.
Ross Greene: 01:18:46There you go. Mhmm. Thank y'all for having me. I have thoroughly enjoyed this. We Anytime y'all want me to come back.
Chris Enroth: 01:18:55Sounds good.
Ross Greene: 01:18:56Be glad to.
Chris Enroth: 01:18:57Yeah, Ross. Yeah. I I learned a lot and I I can't wait to go buy some Vidalia onions. So, well, maybe Peru onions right now but.
Ross Greene: 01:19:08I was gonna say, unfortunately, they're probably gonna be Peru's at this point but try to support those Vidalia growers. You know, you can look for, you know, GNR farms, Bland Farms, Hendrix produce, some of our Schumann produce. So Schumann produce are gonna be the real sweet onions. You'll see some that'll have the Bland Farms logos. G and R Farms.
Ross Greene: 01:19:36Hendrix produce is another one. You'll have Herndon Farms, and and, you know, McLean farms, we've got a lot of little small farms and a lot of those are all almost all family run like the families run them as a whole group. You know, they've got the the sons and dads is running the field and you got the wives and the daughters helping run the sheds and you've got, you know, it's a whole family thing.
Chris Enroth: 01:20:09Very good. But Emily, thanks for being here this week. Appreciate it. Finding some really good recipes for some soup.
Emily Swihart: 01:20:15Of course, my pleasure. Yes, thank you, Ross. Learned a lot and I'm adding, I'm gonna bookmark this Vidalia Onion website with all these recipes for future meals. Shout out to something that I didn't know was a thing, but I think is gonna be a favorite, which is the Vidalia onion jam. Like, a savory jam.
Emily Swihart: 01:20:35I'm gonna have to try that one. So thank you, Ross.
Ross Greene: 01:20:37Yeah. Mhmm. Well, thank you, guys.
Chris Enroth: 01:20:41Thank you. Well, we'll get Ken, are you here? Hello?
Ken Johnson: 01:20:45Yes, I'm here. Hi. Wait, maybe.
Chris Enroth: 01:20:49All right.
Ken Johnson: 01:20:50I'm here.
Chris Enroth: 01:20:51We'll just pick up where we normally do it.
Emily Swihart: 01:20:54Ken came back. We found him.
Chris Enroth: 01:20:56We found him. Ken, thank you so much for coming here and back again. Logging off and on with Zoom. Fun connection problems today. So thank you.
Ken Johnson: 01:21:10Yes. Thank you both. And let's do this again next week.
Chris Enroth: 01:21:16Oh, we shall do this again next week. The holiday season is stressful, and it can be stressful for many reasons on multiple levels. We're gonna talk about that stress, maybe some tips that we can use to make it not so stressful. I'm gonna talk with Tessa Hobbs Curley, our health and community wellness educator about, maybe de stressing our holidays either. So listeners, thank you for doing what you do best and that is listening or if you watch this on YouTube, watch.
Chris Enroth: 01:21:45And as always, keep on growing.
Ross Greene: 01:21:57University of Illinois Extension.