While onions are available throughout the country year-round, spring is a special time. That’s when America’s Sweet onions start coming out of the ground, providing consumers with locally grown, fresh, sweet and crunchy onions for the dinner table.
Sweet onions are known for their sweet flavor, so much so that you could eat them like apples. They are usually available for a few months at a time. They have a shorter shelf-life than other onion varieties across the country. With the home quarantines due to the Coronavirus pandemic, eating onions with a nutritious diet can help boost your immunity.
The Texas 1015s kick off the season, coming out first in March. They represent a lasting legacy of sweet onion growth in Texas, home to America’s first sweet onion crops. Texas began growing sweet onions from Bermuda beginning in 1898. Farmers in Vidalia., Ga., began farming those sweet onions in the 1930s.
In June, you can find Walla Walla sweets in Washington, and California Imperials and Sweetie Sweets will be out in July. The season is capped off by Maui Sweets come out of Hawaii and Yensis sweets out of Alaska. All onions’ flavors are influenced heavily by the type of soils in which they are grown. In Alaska, for example, the soil is nurtured by a glacial silt to make its amazing Yensis onions.
Onions are one of the oldest vegetables across the globe and represent an approximate $8 billion marketplace in America. They contain 11 vitamins and minerals and are naturally fat, cholesterol and sodium free. They have been shown to help reduce cardiovascular disease, combat some cancers and diabetes, and they boost your immunity. Those many skills are why the National Onion Association calls it “Nature’s Ninja.” For more on Natures’ Ninja, go to www.onions-usa.org.
