The Market Box

Spring is here and my favourite part is watching the blossoms develop in the stonefruit orchards. It means we are a little bit closer to peach, nectarine and cherry season. Can you pick a favourite stonefruit?

This week’s top picks ❤
❤ Broccoli – supply and price has improved. With other veggies prices decreasing broccoli is not able to demand high prices
❤ Corn – great supply coming out of Queensland. Last week was good, but this week is better!
❤ Strawberries - abundance of delicious red strawberries. Grab a few punnets and this will help out the growers who had a really tough start to the season
❤ Leafy Greens – local leafy greens have improved in supply, quality and price. I’ve been able to put some gorgeous English Spinach and bunch rocket in the boxes. It has been a long wait!
❤ Zucchini – cheapest I have seen zucchini’s all year. Great value.

Be wary 🖤
🖤 Cucumber – a bout of warmer weather has brought on the crop and price eased a little but unfortunately the cold has returned and they are still commanding high prices.
🖤Tomatoes – still not enough supply around. Romas and truss tomatoes prices are still high, field the better value.
🖤Capsicum – still behind their Queensland counterparts and until supply increases prices are still high. Green is better value.
🖤 Bananas – a cold start to winter delayed growth and stalled supply. Not expensive but just a little more than usual.
🖤 Blueberries – the export market is high for blueberries at the moment so not a lot of supply for the domestic market. Buy strawberries instead.

Fri-yay fun 🤪

It's bean tough lately with the cost of veggies but there's grape news! Prices are on the way down. After weeks of literally no supply, it was sooo good to add green leafy veggies to the boxes; iceberg, wombok, kale, Asian greens, rocket, cavolo nero. Sugar snaps peas and snow peas are also down from record prices.

Meet Davey and Nick who are supplying your current offering of pink lady and bravo apples grown on Androssan's pristine alpine orchard in Batlow. Davey's grandfather purchased the orchard in 1956 and has grown to four orchards growing several varieties of apples. You can see Davey's grandfather (on the left) in the black and white photo behind.

❤This week’s top 5 picks ❤
👍 Iceberg - QLD growers are back to full production levels. The $10 iceberg is a distant memory.
👍 Snow Peas - are being picked in good numbers and price has skydived.
👍 Beans - the first pickings of the new QLD crop have arrived and the price is half of what it was last week.
👍 Strawberries - a delayed start to the season but we now have ideal growing conditions. Masses of beautiful, delicious strawberries are heading to market.
👍 Baby Bok Choy – sunny days has improved the quality and pricing is the best I have seen for the last few months.

🖤 This week’s bottom 5 picks 🖤
👎 Cucumber – very expensive as planting was delayed due to recent rain and overnight temperatures remain cold.
👎 Red Capsicums - became suddenly scarce. Green and yellow are better value..
👎 Cabbages - still at record high prices as the crop was badly affected from flooding in NSW + QLD.
👎 Celery - rain in Victoria has hampered picking and less supply around.
👎 Corn - still expensive. Supply is picking up so shouldn't be too long before price drops.

Berry good news! The current weather conditions on the sunshine coast are ideal for strawberry growing so we can look forward to seeing strawberries in abundance soon 🍓❤️
Strawberry production has been slow this year and we haven’t hit the peak yet as we normally would.
Our early wet weather severely dampened production;
🍓 The planting window of strawberry plants was pushed back significantly by the rain.
🍓 Regular bouts of rain has kept the bees away, causing a big drop in fruit supply.
🍓 Significantly colder temperatures going into winter, with fewer dry sunny days has impacted the volume of berries.

These tiny fragrant blossoms herald the arrival of my favourite time of the year - mango season! These tiny flowers will soon become tasty mangoes. It takes between 100 to 150 days for these flowers to grow into a mature, ripe mango ready to enjoy. Who else is looking forward to mango season?

The amazing sunrises I see help outweigh the early market starts.

Did you recognise the burgundy apple in your boxes this week? It was a Bravo apple.
They are naturally high in bio-active flavonoid anthocyanin, which gives them their beautiful deep burgundy colour.
Thanks to this high level of flavonoids, they are really slow to brown - taking hours if not days! So you can slice your apples ahead of time and enjoy them later. Perfect for school lunchboxes and grazing platters.
It’s a relatively new apple and was developed in WA and is a result of a cross between Royal Gala and Cripps Red apple variety. They are increasing in popularity with this season’s harvest up 30% on last year.
Did you like them?