Gayle's Blog ~ Our Travels Across the U.S.: Vidalia Onion Museum, Vidalia, Georgia

Even though we lived in Georgia for 27 years, as with many other places in the state, we never visited this museum. We usually traveled up and down I-75, and Vidalia is not close to I-75 at all. This year we traveled to Savannah, Georgia to visit friends and from there we headed inland and stayed in Dublin, Georgia and made a side trip to visit the Vidalia Onion Museum. In my opinion, these are the best onions -- they are sweet and have a unique flavor. Even though I will only eat them cooked, they do not have a strong "oniony" taste or smell, which is a plus. How do you know if you are buying a REAL Vidalia? It's product code is 4159.

This year the U.S. Navy Blue Angels are scheduled to headline the Vidalia Onion Festival Air Show on April 25–26, 2026, in Vidalia, GA. The performance takes place at the Vidalia Regional Airport, featuring the team's F/A-18 Super Hornets as part of the annual festival running from April 23–26, 2026. Unfortunately, we are no where near Vidalia anymore to attend the festival.

Gayle & Jim with Yumion

What is the Yumion? Here's an explanation ~~

Onions have been around. In ancient Egypt, the builders of the pyramids were paid in onions. Onions are mentioned in the Bible and were as valuable as gold in Medieval Europe. Today, millions of people associate onions with Vidalia, Georgia, yet this region's commercial crop didn't get started until long after its accidental discovery in the 1930s. In Glennville, a small market promoted local produce, including onions, but these were seen simply as onions -- nothing special, just basic Bermuda-type onions.

In 1949, Georgia built a State Farmer's Market at the busy crossroads of a little town called Vidalia, centered between Macon, Savannah, and Augusta. Travelers started commenting on the distinctively delicious onions found only at that market, and it became key to "those sweet onions from Vidalia" gaining regional recognition.

Vidalia historian Bill Warthen described it as, "A colorful market, where tourists and locals would follow (farmers) around to place orders, the phones would be ringing, truckers were looking for loads."

It's impossible to pinpoint the beginning of the Vidalia Onion industry because, at the time, nobody had an inkling they were making history. In fact, the region's early onion cultivators were simply looking to diversify, searching for a Depression-era alternative to cotton and tobacco as cash crops. There is evidence of 1920s growers near Collins and Johnson Corner and tales of vocational teachers instructing classes to experiment with a few rows of onions. But in 1930, when Mose Coleman added onions to his regular order from the seed catalog, he took his first step toward establishing the Toombs County branch of the Vidalia Onion enterprise.

Mose Coleman

Since local folks grew mostly "multiplier onions" like shallots, Georgia had to import cured onions, adding to their expense. Coleman saw no reason not to try growing his own, so he planted a quarter-acre of onions and was surprised by their unusual flavor.

Hauling his produce in a trailer he'd made from the back of a Model T, he peddled sweet onions from town to town. The Great Depression had begun, but Coleman sold 50-lb. sacks for $3.50.

Coleman described meeting a buyer for a grocery chain: "I pulled out my onion and I ate it there in front of him. He'd never seen anything like it. There wasn't any tears coming out of my eyes, and I wasn't making no face." The buyer bought and advised his managers to do the same. The next year, Mose Coleman planted ten times as many onions.

Mose Coleman always credited his wife Alice (pictured beside him) with encouraging him to try onion seeds touted in the catalogs.

Earlie Jordan

Growing an onion in Vidalia is not the same thing as growing a Vidalia Onion. Producing the now-famous vegetable requires the ideal locale plus the ideal species. Earlie Jordan made that connection. In the 1940s, he started selling Texas onion plants -- seedlings instead of seeds -- to Georgia farmers. He also met Henry Jones of Texas A&M, who was hybridizing onions to meld the flavor of a Bermuda with the yield of a Grano. The resulting yellow granex, once Jordan established it in southeast Georgia, eventually became the Vidalia Onion.

Jordan partnered with Brand Produce to market onions through the Toombs County Plant Corporation. To support this fledging industry, the State of Georgia built a farmer's market in Vidalia where Jordan's company and others packed, sold, and shipped their onions for ten years. Onions were no longer simply sold at random but were actively marketed, forging the way for larger regional markets.

Jordan also innovated better plant rows and overhead irrigation.

Ed Tensley

Tattnal County had its own early producer of sweet onions, Ed Tensley, who called the crop "Georgia Sweet Onions," not "Vidalia Onions." After returning from World War I, Tensley was an agriculture major in New Jersey, then moved to Glennville in the mid-1940s. Working about 700 acres -- 500 of his own -- Tensley planted some of the county's first tomatoes and onions. He owned one of the region's first tractors and was passionate about improving farming techniques, introducing the practice of crop rotation and pond irrigation.

The well-educated Tensley became widely respected for his generosity to the community's schools, including his donation of the first school bus to transport local black children. He was an African American who hired both black and white farmhands and was willing to share his expertise with all area farmers. Tensley's obituary remembered, "the wonderful contributions he brought and shared with the farmers of Tattnal County and adjacent counties."

Doyle Smittle & W.J. Grimes

Pinky McRae

All farming involves risk but certain crops, including sweet onions, carry unusually great challenges. Compounding a boom and bust in the early 1940s, Georgia suffered three years of drought, and most farmers pulled back from planting significant quantities of onions. Pinky McRae was different.

McRae purchased a tract of Toombs County land where he not only grew and sold onions, but also piloted the idea of using the vegetables as corporate gifts, annually supplying Georgia Power with 2,000 bags of onions.

People started placing orders in February for the April harvest, and enthusiastic fans would journey from across the region. One lady annually drove from Macon to buy Pinky's onions because she claimed they helped her arthritis. Into the late 1960s, McRae was the most recognizable purveyor of the unique crop he vehemently marketed as "Toombs County" -- not "Vidalia" onions.

The New Brothers

Douglas "Red" McCorkle with a load of Toombs
County onions at the farmer's market in
Columbia, South Carolina, circa 1938

The Beginning of a Legacy ~~ Workers sort and bag some of the first onions grown in Toombs County in May 1957, at Mac New's Warehouse on the corner of South Lanier Street and Highway 280 in Lyons. Back then, the bags had to be sewn shut by hand with a needle. Fast forward 40 years in the April 23 edition of The Advance-Progress with the 1997 Sweet Onion Festival Preview issue.

What is a Federal Marketing Order? A marketing order is a legal instrument authorized by Congress and designed to help stabilize market conditions for fruits and vegetables. Marketing orders may maintain quality, standardize packaging, regulate the flow of product to market, establish reserves for storable commodities, and authorize production research, marketing research and development, and advertising.

Industries voluntarily enter into these programs, choosing to have Federal oversight of certain aspects of their operations. Once formed, marketing orders are binding for all entities in the industry. The U.S. Department of Agriculture manages the programs in the public interest.

Marketing Order #955 operates out of this building, promoting Vidalia Onions all over the country and assuring Vidalia Onion quality by funding ongoing crop research.

The One and Only ~~ Georgia has many products to be proud of, but only the Vidalia Onion can claim to be our Official State Vegetable. This designation came in 1990 when State Rep. Fisher Barfoot of Vidalia (left of Governor Zell Miller) introduced a resolution that passed in the legislature. Since then, many states -- including Washington with its Walla Walla sweet onion -- have battled to get their own state veggies officially represented.

Vidalia Onion Boxes

A Labor of Love ~~ Vidalia onions are predominately hand-planted and hand-harvested much as they were in the 1930s. Guarding their delicate nature from start to finish means working on hand and knee to plant them every fall and harvest them every spring.

Planting ~~ One worker can plant a half-acre of onions per workday. With some 12,000 acres planted each year, that's a lot of labor.

Harvesting ~~ A worker needs a full day to clip enough onions to fill 150 bags. So, four workers can hand-harvest just one acre per day, or 600 bags. Less than 2% of Vidalia onions are mechanically harvested.

Shipping ~~ Around 200 million pounds of Vidalia onions are shipped out each season.

Transplanting: November -- January ~~ When most Americans are thinking about Thanksgiving, farmers are thinking about moving their onions. Once seedlings are about as thick as a pencil, they're ready to transplant. A spiked "pegger" wheel pierces holes for each plant. In early years, peggers were hand-held contraptions used like a push mower; but today they're tractor attachments.

Hand-pulled, bundled transplants are tossed along seemingly endless rows. Workers manually insert each tiny plant where it will grow to maturity. A typical acre holds about 80,000 seedlings. Farms transplant in two waves. The second round of "setting" occurs around New Year's. Having two crop cycles prolongs harvest season for the farmers and insures against total plant loss during uncooperative weather.

The Growing Season: November - May ~~ For the next few months, Vidalia farmers faithfully tend to their onions. The art of fertilizing, irrigating, and protecting against pests is learned over years and passed down the generations. With organic onions, weed control is especially labor intensive. For all Vidalias, adequate water is crucial to the development of sweetness, and rainfall is supplemented with irrigation.

Deadly Threats ~~ It isn't easy being an onion. At certain points in its growth, high temperatures can be detrimental but during others, cold temperatures are ruinous. And, badly timed wet or dry spells can always spoil a crop.

Harvesting: April - June ~~ If Georgia's sweeties survive flood, drought, cold, hail, disease and other maladies, springtime brings harvest. Timing is crucial: harvest too soon and onions aren't fully ripe; harvest too late and onions may rot.

When the green tops start to sag, harvesting crews slowly and carefully "undercut" the onions with a plow blade to separate the roots from the bulbs. Undercutting pushes the bulbs above the soil where they can heat-cure in the field, allowing each onion to develop protective outer layers.

Laborers return a few days later to hand-clip roots and foliage. Bulbs are then transported to the packing shed for further drying, sizing, and packaging.

Drying: April - June ~~ Onions are lightly dried to increase shelf life. The process creates husks, which are mostly brushed off during grading. These dry outer layers are not separate skins like with most fruits and vegetables, but they are very helpful: they keep out chemicals and make onions tops on the list of safe produce.

Grading: April - September ~~ Dried onions travel along a packing line where brushes whisk off dirt and hulls. They are then hand-inspected for quality and boxed or bagged for shipment. Grading provides quality control by kicking out damaged onions. It also sorts the crop by size, which -- like quality -- is USDA regulated.

Distribution and Storage: April - September ~~ The same high water content that makes Vidalia mild also makes the more difficult to keep and ship. To ensure quality, they head to market within days of harvest. For short-term storage, Vidalias are held in huge coolers. The delicate onions are then transported in refrigerated trucks.

Overage goes into long-term storage, from which Vidalias are retrieved as needed. By rendering harvested onions dormant, controlled-atmosphere storage, which monitors temperature, humidity, and oxygen levels, allows farmers to grow double the crop and lets you enjoy Vidalias for twice as long.

"The only thing better than the onions in Vidalia is the people. They're great cooks, and friendly." ~~ Chef Bobby Flay

A humble bulb from the lily family, the Vidalia Onion was once sold from a ramshackle truck bed and roadside stands. Later, local grocery stores offered the unique vegetable, and it became a favorite for civic club fundraisers and mail-order specialty products.

In recent years, the Vidalia Onion has consistently been the #1 vegetable crop in Georgia and grosses far more each year than its fruity cousin, the Georgia peach!