Sweet onion prices

Sweet is defined by flavor rather than color: low sulfur content and higher water and sugar give these onions a mild taste, and the market's two best-known sources, Vidalia in Georgia and Walla Walla in Washington, both grow onions bred and marketed for that trait. Unlike the storage crop, sweet onions ship on short calendars rather than year-round: Vidalia's season runs from spring into late summer, Walla Walla's is a summer-only crop, and both go quiet the rest of the year. Sweet onions are packed in the same wholesale sack and carton sizes as the other varieties. Because a sweet onion serves a different use than a pungent cooking onion, demand for it does not substitute for yellow, red or white, and its price runs on its own calendar tied to those two harvest windows, not the broader storage cycle.