# Storage onions vs fresh-market onions > Storage onions are pungent yellows that are cured after harvest and held for months, so the Northwest crop becomes a national inventory drawn down all winter. Sweet onions barely store at all, which is why late-winter and spring pricing hinges on how much storage crop is left and what condition it is in. _Updated Jul 10, 2026._ Storage onions are the pungent yellows that are cured after harvest and held in storage for months, and they are why the country can eat Northwest onions in February. Sweet onions are the opposite: they do not store, they sell fresh off the current harvest and then they are gone. That split, a crop you can bank versus a crop you cannot, drives the shape of the whole onion year. ## What makes an onion a storage onion It comes down to curing and chemistry. After harvest, storage onions are dried and cured for about two to three weeks, until the necks are tight and the outer scales are papery and dry. That dormancy is what lets them hold. A well-cured pungent yellow can keep for six to nine months in cold storage. Idaho-Eastern Oregon's crop is the textbook case: harvested in late summer, cured, stored and shipped out steadily from roughly August through April. Higher sulfur, more pungency and a dry tight neck are what a storage onion is built on. ## Why sweets are a different market Sweet onions, the Vidalias, the Walla Wallas, the Texas 1015s, are low in the pungency that preserves a bulb. Mild and high in moisture, they keep for weeks, not months, so they cannot be a stored inventory. They ship fresh during their origin's window and that is it. That is why a Vidalia is a spring onion and not a January onion, and why sweets trade as their own market rather than as part of the storage-onion pool. Do not read a sweet-onion price as a signal about the yellow storage crop. They are different animals. ## Why spring is the tight season The storage crop is a fixed pot that only shrinks. Once the Northwest is harvested in late summer, no more is coming until the next harvest, so every month of winter draws the inventory down. By late winter and spring two things bite at once. Volume is running low, and the onions still in storage have been there the longest, so shrink and quality risk are highest. Late-season storage pricing hinges on exactly those two things: how much crop is left and what condition it is in. When a storage crop comes up short, as the Northwest did in the tight 2022 to 2023 season with its tonnage well below normal, the back half of the storage year is where it shows in price. ## Watch a storage season on the chart [Chart: Idaho-Eastern Oregon onion FOB by variety, size and pack](https://knowyouronions.news/origin/idaho-eastern-oregon) ([data](https://knowyouronions.news/origin/idaho-eastern-oregon.md) — chart image: https://knowyouronions.news/charts/origin/idaho-eastern-oregon/chart.png) The Idaho-Eastern Oregon chart above is a storage season drawn out. Follow it from the fall, when new-crop onions come into storage and prices set their opening level, across the winter as the inventory draws down, into the spring when supply tightens. Then watch the line go quiet in late spring, because the crop is sold out and the shed is empty until the next harvest. That gap is not missing data. It is the storage crop finishing its year, exactly on schedule. Know Your Onions reports storage-crop prices as USDA publishes them. We do not forecast how a storage season will end. We read it off the quotes as it draws down. ## Related data + guides - [Idaho-Eastern Oregon prices](https://knowyouronions.news/origin/idaho-eastern-oregon) - [The US onion calendar](https://knowyouronions.news/guides/the-onion-calendar) - [Sweet onion prices](https://knowyouronions.news/variety/sweet) --- Canonical URL: https://knowyouronions.news/guides/storage-onions-vs-fresh-market