From the Florida Onion, June 2009
by Chris Pawelski
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As of mid-May onion planting in the black dirt is pretty much completed, including on our farm. We finished on April 27. I look at farming as if it’s a 3-act play with planting being the main thrust of Act I and harvest and selling being what Act III is all about. Act II encompasses the main part of the growing season. There is an old saying, “the second act is the best”. It also said the second act can be the darkest, and in many respects, at least in regard to onion farming, this is true. This and my next column will deal with “Act II.”
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Since planting is staggered, usually taking about a month or so, what has been planted is at very different stages. In a few days to little over a week (depending on the air and soil temperature, amount of moisture, etc…) the barley will emerge. Onions may appear a few days later, earlier of the seed is “primed” or pre-germinated before planting. When the barley gets to be a certain size it must be sprayed with a selective herbicide to kill it or it could actually choke out the crop. If killed too early the barley can fail to provide adequate protection against the black dirt from blowing and harming the onions. After the onions emerge we also apply our first pre-emerge herbicide. We apply two different chemicals which control a different spectrum of weeds. We’ll apply the barley killing material once and the two pre-emerge materials three times at 3-week intervals. We also have a number of post emerge herbicides we spray to burn down any weeds that may sprout before we apply the pre-emerge materials or that aren’t controlled by those materials. The total herbicide costs is roughly $180 an acre, depending on the weed pressure.
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As the barley dries down most farmers will apply a side dressing of granular fertilizer and work it into the soils and mechanically kill some weeds by cultivating the fields. Most cultivators attach to a tractors pto but some, like use, use simpler basket weeders. Though they don’t do as good a job we can attach them to our three AC-G tractors and do many more acres than the slower pto driven cultivators.
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By the end of May or early June our four seasonal farmworkers will arrive. We provide free housing, gas and utilities as well as free DirecTv service for our employees. We also will drive them to the grocery store each week. They will start work for us in early June doing hand weeding. There are some weeds, despite the herbicides we use, that survive and need to be removed or they will choke out the onions. Our employees typically work from 7 AM to 5 PM (with an hour lunch and two 15-minute breaks) Monday thru Friday and half a day Saturday during this period of the season, which usually lasts until early August.
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Starting in mid to late June we start to have to worry about and deal with various plant disease threats as well as onion thrips. In my next column I’ll discuss that topic as well what events can make “Act II” the “darkest” act, mainly the threat of severe weather events like hailstorms.