By Jerry Flook, Garland Historian
Published in the Garland-Rowlett Messenger, February 2013
Did your vegetable gardeners get your onion transplants in the ground last month? If not, you are too late for the best results, since early January is the optimal time to plant them here. Probably few readers are aware that the well-loved vegetable was once grown commercially in the Garland area.
Cotton was the basis of Garland’s economy from the 1880s through the mid-1950s. But the cotton farmer’s income from his crop was subject to the whims of rainfall, insect invasion, and most of all the commodity market. Every few years a failure of the cotton crop or a drop in cotton prices would set the farmers to searching for some more dependable crop. A short crop in 1907 was one of those times and the substitutes chosen by several Garland farmers were Irish potatoes and onion. But the onion part of the experiment, at least, failed to meet the expectations (no reports have been seen on the potato harvest). It seems that the onion growers couldn’t find a decent market for their crop. The vegetable, unlike cotton or grain, could not be stored on an extended basis until the market improved.
In 1914 the cotton farmers were once again facing a weak cotton market due to surplus production. At that time money was tight and the farmers couldn’t afford to build a cotton storage warehouse to await a better market. So the local businessmen formed a “But-a-Bale Club,” buying up cotton from the farmers at 10 cents per pound and then holding it off the market stored in the defunct interurban railway warehouse. Since the interurban warehouse was small and available for only 2 months, Smith & Grubb, owners of the Garland Fair Park, embarked on construction of a permanent cotton warehouse at their Fair Park.
And surely enough the cotton market made a dramatic recovery on the heels of WWI, the price reaching a record 40 cents per pound in October, 1919. But by the following October the price had fallen to 18 cents, likely due to the overproduction stimulated by the high prices of the previous season.
By 1922 the farmers were once again searching for a crop substitute. The Garland News reported in May 1922 that more sweet potatoes had been planted here than ever before. But there was the recurrent problem of storing such a perishable crop for sale at peak prices for later in the year. The News editor called for construction of a potato curing plant to help preserve the crop for later sale. That fall it was reported that farmer Calvin Taylor had made good money off his four acres of onions, which yielded about 200 bushels an acre. It was pointed out that onions have the advantage of being finished when harvested once, unlike cotton, which usually required more than one picking in a season. They brought in ready money between seasons, were little trouble to cultivate or harvest and were not bothered by insects.
In 1931 our nation was in the grips of the Great Depression and the cotton market had crashed along with many others. The Garland Chamber of Commerce that year called a mass meeting of farmers and businessmen to urge the Texas legislature to prohibit planting of cotton in 1932, provided the other cotton states did the same, to restore the market price. That spring a large acreage of onions was planted here despite unfavorable rain and cold weather. Alternating cold spells and warm weather stimulates the onion plant to set flower stalks (a process called bolting), which in turn causes the bulb not to achieve maximum size and promotes spoilage.
The varieties frown in the Garland area were the Yellow Bermuda and the White Crystal Wax. In 1932 a large crew of Mexicans was imported to plant onions, the first mention of the use of migrant workers in this area. That same year one local onion farmer discovered that his planters had planted bunches of transplants in eachhill rather than singles, the workers being paid by the number of plants they set out.
In 1936 the Santa Fe railroad built a covered onion platform on their tracks near the Bankhead Highway crossing. The Katy railroad had already made additions to accommodate 10 rail cars at once for onions. Onions were also shipped from Sachse and Roney, both of which had covered onion platforms on their railroads. But as misfortune would have it, despite the improved shipping facilities, the 1936 crop was stunted by drought, the onions only reaching “boiler” size, the average yield being 60 bushels per acre as opposed to 150 bushels in a normal season. Harvesting crews were not satisfied with the wages and hands became scarce. Some onion farmers even threatened to leave the crop in the fields due to low prices and high labor costs. As a result, onion grower J. A. Alexander started organizing the farmers to plant spinach as a fall crop to supplement their incomes that summer.
But the onion farmers did not lose heart. It was reported in June 1939 that onion pulling, clipping, sacking and hauling was “going on in a big way.” About 150 railcar loads had been shipped. The News editor exclaimed, “There will surely be lots of hamburgers which wouldn’t be complete without the famous [Garland area] onion eaten from coast to coast in the near future.”
Onion production in the Garland area continued through the 1940s although profits continued to be undependable. In July 1951 the Garland Tribune reported, “The onion harvest in the blackland onion belt, in which Garland is about the center, came to a close this week and was the largest ever. Sixteen thousand acres were planted and for four weeks the onion sheds along the Santa Fe were swamped with bags of onions. Geo. L. Coon, North Texas’ biggest buyer, rolled car after car to Chicago, New York City, Boston and other places. Each car carried 510 bags, each weighing 50 pounds. But it yielded little profit.” Garland’s onion production soon ceased while cotton continued to be raised in quantity until the early 1960s.