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Workers harvesting onions produced using the plasticulture system.
Workers harvesting onions produced using the plasticulture system.
Workers harvesting onions produced using the plasticulture system.
Workers harvesting onions produced using the plasticulture system.
Workers harvesting onions produced using the plasticulture system.
Workers harvesting onions produced using the plasticulture system.
Workers harvesting onions produced using the plasticulture system.
Workers harvesting onions produced using the plasticulture system.
Workers harvesting onions produced using the plasticulture system.
Workers harvesting onions produced using the plasticulture system.
My name is Matt Harsh.
my family and I operate Chesley Vegetable Farms here in Smithsburg Maryland we
grow about 30 acres
of mixed vegetables and another ten acres of small fruits
and tree fruits. We sell at four farmers markets and
Washington DC area. We also supply five Wegmen's grocery stores
and work with a couple smaller wholesale accounts particularly
two home delivery companies.
We're standing here in the middle of our onion field for this year. The main
benefit
of producing onions for us is it
provides a good job for our guys early in the season.
We plant our onions in March typically and
we don't have a lot of other things going on at that time of the year so
it's a lot of work
the get all these onions planted. This year we planted 200,000
so it was a very good job for them early in the year when we didn't have
anything else to do.
They take a fair amount of care through the rest the year you have to go through and
hand weed them a couple times
to make sure they're clean around the holes until about middle of June when they
start to bulb. At that point it's not quite as critical to keep the weeds out.
But then there's also big benefit us on the back end of the season
in that we pull these dry them and we can sell them the whole way through December
and sometimes into January so we can really extend our marketing season
and it's not something I have to sell right away like a lot over other crops.
Our tomatoes and peppers and
peaches you gotta sell right away. These onions we can dry them and
and sell them well into the latter part of the year.
The two biggest challenges from a production standpoint
are weeds. There are some herbicides but I haven't found one that's really all
that good
yet. It's hard to use herbicides on a black plastic production system
so you really have to go through and hand weed them. I haven't found anything else
that works other than
two or three hand weedings. You really want to get the weeds when they are small
because as soon as they start to get big
you will pull on the onions out at the same time.
It's really critical to get them hand weeded right around the holes
at the right time.The other major production problem is bacterial
softneck.
It is a bacterial disease that
the onions will get. They found that it's much worse and hot years
and when the onions get heated up. We have not had a very hot season
so that has not been much of a concern for us this year. We also use a lot of copper
sprays
which is very safe. I try to keep them covered with copper at least every seven
to ten days or in advance of any major rain events or anything. I come out
and
and put a copper spray on top of all the onions
and the we try to make the holes
maybe when you see some the other video we try to make a hole big enough so the
onions can actually come up out of the hole instead of them getting trapped under the
plastic so they don't you heat up quite as much.
The marking plan for for these onions
is to take them to our farmers markets,
to sell them to the home delivery companies we work with and also to
sell them to the grocery stores
and that's worked really well for us last couple years.
The fact that we can dry and hold on is a huge benefit from a marketing
standpoint
everything else we grow is so perishable it has to be sold right away
and these onions it's really nice to not have to sell these right away
like we do so many other things we grow the fact that we can bag them
and sell them in October November December really makes it nice for us.
They keep our wholesale customers coming back to buy other things we have
because we can offer these onions and there are not a lot of other options around at that
time of the year.
Other marketing options for them, I am
I'm sure if we were to roll up to some of the terminal markets or places with
them
we could sell them onions. I know there's a fair amount of onions
that go through
the produce auctions up in Shippensburg an over in Leola.
We've never tried those marketing avenues
we've stuck to selling them ourselves but I believe other people have done quite
well
selling those ways I mean.
It's a good crop for wholesale if you can get the volume up
if you can get enough planted that you can hook up with the person that wants them
wholesale we found that they can be a very good crop in
and a good profitable crop and they're also great to retail