The early spring is prompting ample supplies of fresh produce into the Brisbane Produce Market, reducing prices and providing some excellent tasting fruit and vegetables to buy.
You can pick up great quality beetroot, brussels sprouts, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, capsicum, carrot, celery, field grown eggplant, fennel, leeks, snow peas, silverbeet, zucchini, onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes and pumpkin, all at reasonable prices.
Squash is ranging from being reasonable to firm in price, depending on its size and quality. It’s the relative of pumpkins, cucumbers and melons and comes in a range of sizes, shapes and colours, with some squash having edible skin. The most common are white to yellow in colour and have sweet, succulent flesh.
Expect to pay slightly firmer prices for Asian vegetables, parsnips and mushrooms.
Beans have reduced in price but are still considered to cost more than usual while the price of sweet corn is firm and is on the way up.
Glasshouse grown eggplant and new Australian asparagus are expensive. Select asparagus with firm, crisp spears with compact tips and tight scales.
Queensland’s winter cropping region of Bowen is producing some great tasting tomatoes in abundance, dropping the cost of field grown tomatoes to low prices. You will still find top quality hydroponic tomatoes at higher prices but they are eating well.
Lettuce, mixed leaf salad and herbs, with the exception of basil, are value for money.
Cucumbers and eshallots have firmed in price while fewer hass avocados are being picked at this end of the season, pushing up their prices but they are still affordable.
The recent warm weather has resulted in the arrival of the first of the Northern Territory’s mangoes, which are expensive, and an abundance of reasonably priced bananas, passionfruit and pawpaws.
You will also find great prices on blood and cara cara oranges, New Zealand kiwifruit, rockmelon, watermelon and blueberries.
However, the best eating and most abundant fruits of the week are strawberries which are in low in price.
Expect to pay more for apples, with the end of the popular pink lady season pushing their prices up.
Raspberries, lemons, limes, honey murcott mandarins, honey dew, end of season packham pears and pineapples and also firmed in price.
USA grown grapes join Australian crimsons on Your Local Fruit Shop’s shelves but they are firmly priced to expensive.
You will also find USA grown cherries, peaches, nectarines and plums but they are expensive and their quality is mixed.
Brisbane Produce Market