Evening Republican, Volume 59, Number 80, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 April 1917 — Onion King Putting Out Seven Hundred Pounds of Seed. [ARTICLE]

Onion King Putting Out Seven Hundred Pounds of Seed.

Alfred Donnelly, onion king of Jasper and many other counties, was a caller at Thf Republican office this morning and as usual the conversation turned to onions. If you want to know anything about onions ask Alf, for if there is anything worth knowing about them he knows it. Mr. Donnelly stated that he has already put out five hundred pounds of onion seed and now has an order in for two hundred more pounds. The seed costs him in the neighborhood of one dollar a pound and he has been planting about one hundred pounds to the acre, which is a little more than he usually does, generally averating about seventy-five pounds to the acre. Mr. Donnelly already has planted four acres and will plant two more acres, making six in all.

Mr. Donnelly has been in the onion business for a great many years and has confined himself to this kind of farming alone and is the most successful onion man in this section and his reputation as a grower of this vegetable extends over a wide area. Years of close study has made him the success that he is in his line. Alf has 208 acres of land in all, the balance of the land not used for onion growing being rented out by him. Recently Alf advertised some onion sets for sale and ,-people from all parts of the county came to get some of these valuable sets and they were soon all gone. It is the belief of the premier onion man that there will be a great amount of this valuable food raised this year and this fall will find them a great deal cheaper. At -the present time they are sellng at wholesale at. eight dollars a bushel, with practically none to be had. Mr. Donnelly had about 300 bushe’s of onion sets this spring' which he disposed of for from $4.50 to $5.75 a bushel, bringing him in the neighborhood of $1,500, which he considers very good. The six acres planted this year are expected to run in the neighborhood of 500 bushels per acre, providing no bad luck is had, and the owner predicts that he will sell them for from $2 to $3 per bushel to the wholesale houses. A meadow of 20 acres! on the Donnelly farm was sown in clover, the seed costing fifty dollars, which took what was made off the oats crop of ‘the same twenty acres for 1916. The crop of clover is already rooted out of the ground and will have to be replanted.