Brisbane Market Report - 70

Winter is the time for warming vegetable meals and exotic fruits, with some of the more traditional jamming varieties in season to heat up a kitchen in a weekend cook up.
Some great quality Asian vegetables, beetroot, brussels sprouts, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, carrots, celery, fennel, silverbeet, sweet corn, onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes and pumpkin are on your local fruit shop's shelves at value-for-money prices.
Smaller sized squash may be expensive but the larger offerings are reasonably priced.
You will expect to pay firm prices for imported asparagus, parsnips, snow peas, silverbeet, zucchini and mushrooms. Eggplant is firming in price.
Be prepared to pay top dollar for beans, which are in short supply.
It may be winter but there are some excellent salad products about with lettuce, mixed leaf salad, cucumber, eshallots and most herbs at reasonable prices.
If you are cooking with coriander and basil, it is in short supply this week so be prepared to pay more for it.
Tomatoes remain expensive.
Avocados are firmly priced with the most common being the oval shaped and pebbly skinned hass variety and the smaller, rougher skinned wurtz that is grown in Bundaberg and Central Queensland at this time of year. The wurtz variety will be ready for harvest on Queensland's southern coastline from about mid-June through to October.
Some fruits are eating well and are reasonably priced including lemons, limes, the easy to peel Queensland imperial and the juicy afourer mandarin varieties, red grapes, watermelon, honey dew, pears, pineapples and passionfruit.
You will pay firm prices for bananas, strawberries, raspberries, end of season figs, rockmelon and pawpaw.
The last of the Australian plums are also firmly priced while peaches and nectarines have arrived from the USA and are expensive.
Apples are expensive this week, as are blueberries.
For those looking to do some jamming, its rosella, guava and quince time of year.
You will also find a range of exotic and early winter offerings such as persimmons, pomegranate, carambola (star fruit), rambutan, dragon fruit and the fruit sometimes known as a pineapple guava or guavasteen, the feijoa.