Brisbane Market Report 91

It’s an early summer in Your Local Fruit Shop with the first of the cherries and lychees arriving sooner than usual, taking up position beside festive mangoes and stonefruit and an abundance of vegetables.

Some vegetable prices are expensive after October hail storms and rain deluges, including beans, the best quality Victorian cauliflower, zucchinis and bogged-in potatoes and sweet potatoes, which are proving a challenge for Bundaberg and Lockyer Valley growers to gain access to in all the mud.

You will pay firm prices for brussels sprouts, poorer quality Queensland cauliflower, parsnips, new season Victorian snow peas, silverbeet and squash, although some heat affected stock and smaller-sized offerings can be found at reduced prices.

For the budget conscious, there is an abundance of reasonably priced Asian vegetables, asparagus, beetroot, broccoli, cabbage, capsicum, carrots, celery, fennel, leeks, sweet corn, onions and pumpkin.

There are two markets for eggplant, with the glamour glasshouse vegetables firmly priced over the reasonably priced field-grown option.  For a less bitter taste, choose smaller eggplants as they tend to be sweeter and have thinner skins and less seeds.

In the fruit aisle, hail in the Lockyer Valley and Toowoomba region last week resulted in lettuce prices firming, with Queensland stock struggling in quality over the Victorian product.

The best priced salad items are mixed leaf salad and cucumbers, which you can team with tomatoes that range from reasonable to firm prices, depending on their quality, with punnets of sweeter cherry tomatoes in abundance.

Expensive hass avocados are arriving from Western Australia and New Zealand and are expected to lower in price as greater amounts are harvested in the weeks ahead.

Eshallots and both dill and basil are firmly priced although most herbs are value-for-money.

The first Australian lychees and cherries will be at the top of their price range for a few weeks until the harvest picks up as the season progresses.

The best tasting and value-for-money buys are sensational eating mangoes from the Northern Territory, with Katherine grown fruit costing a little more than the Darwin crop.

You will pick up reasonably priced blueberries, lemons, honey murcott mandarins, valencia and blood oranges, watermelon and pawpaw this week.

Expect to pay firm prices for apples, bananas, average quality strawberries, with South Australian fruit of slightly lesser quality much cheaper than the Victorian grown fruit, raspberries, limes, kiwifruit, honey dew, pears, pineapples, passionfruit and all stonefruit.

Grapes are expensive as the USA grown fruit finishes its season and there is a break before the Australian grown fruit is ripe for picking.

Brisbane Produce Market