“If you looked outside at the end of July, it looked like autumn”

 Buyer at Waterman Onions and seller at uienzaadonline.nl: Jelmer Elzinga, describes what caught his eye during the 2023 growing season. In his regular column, Jelmer reports on the development of onion sets and seed onions in the Netherlands. 

Summer or autumn after all?

It is August and that means harvesting has been in full swing in Europe for some time now. If you looked outside at the end of July, however, it looked more like autumn. “The start of the new harvest started with winter onions sets and winter seed onions. These were not successful everywhere, but the plots with a good stand had nice results,” Jelmer says.

The first plots of second-year onion sets, harvested in early and mid-July, were of good quality. “Since the end of June there was a nice amount of rain at times, but in July this turned into locally heavy rain, perhaps too much rain. This increased the risk of fungal diseases in the foliage and bacteria in the bulb of the onion,” says Jelmer. The abundant rain has proved fatal to the last plots of onion sets, the lack of wind-dried days has caused substantial bacterial infestation and unfortunately, these plots are no longer suitable for export to distant destinations.

After July’s rain, plots with initially little foliage seem to have recovered somewhat from the delay in foliage development. Plots with low foliage, where there has been torrential rain or plots whose structure was not up to par now show occasional spots of bacterial infestation. The amount of fungal diseases in the foliage is not too bad, but stemphylium, leaf spot disease or downy mildew have been detected here and there.”

Sprout inhibition onion sets

Jelmer says: “We see that the majority of growers have now treated their plots with MH.”The variable stand combined with the difficult to predict number of growing days makes it not easy for growers to determine the right time to use MH.

Harvesting

In the south of the Netherlands, growers have already started harvesting seed onions in mid-August. In the north of the country, harvest is now also starting up. The well-matured plots produce a brilliant quality onion, although the coarseness and final yield are often not so bad. When is the best time to harvest, read here.

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