The word Vidalia will conjure up sweeter thoughts this spring as the Vidalia onion crop has rallied from a rough beginning.

“It’s looking real good, especially in the last two to three weeks since we have had warmer temperatures,” said Reid Torrance, University Extension Service county agent in Tattnall County. “We started with a puny crop because it was cold.”

Torrance said cold temperatures in November and December hampered the crop — an $80 million a year crop in Georgia — causing lack of growth and delays in planting.

But, warmer temperatures in the last few weeks have helped the valuable crop. Harvesting of the Vidalia onions is expected to begin within the next four to six weeks.

“At this point I feel pretty good about the crop from the way it started out,” Torrance said. “We’re on line for an average season.”

Torrance said due to a portion of the Vidalia onion crop being planted in January and February as opposed to November and December, many of this year’s onions wouldn’t be the four-inch diameter jumbo size, but rather two and a half inches.

George Boyhan, an extension horticulturalist with the University’s College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, said cold temperatures have a detrimental effect on the Vidalia onions.

He said the vegetation on the top of the onions, when met with the colder temperatures, reacts in such a way that it takes food from the bulb of the onion. This occurrence takes away from the value of the onions by the time they become ripe in the spring, causing damage.

This damage crippled the Vidalia onion crop last year.

“It can’t get any worse than it was last year,” Boyhan said. “Disease hurt a lot of growers. We probably lost one third of our crop.”

In the next four weeks the crop will be susceptible to damaging cold, but Torrance said he didn’t expect it to have much of an effect.

“The odds of cold having a significant effect are minimal,” he said. “Historically speaking, we just don’t have brutally cold temperatures in March.”

The Vidalia onion is a yellow Granex onion grown in a 20-county region of southeastern Georgia.

They are distinguished from normal onions by their sweet and mild flavor, a product of soil with low sulfur levels, specific irrigation techniques and the mild winters of southeastern Georgia.