It's well and truly springtime now, despite these cooler nights and rainy days. We're definitely noticing a shift in availability of produce both from our farm and from other growers. It's really the transition season where we find the availability of winter produce slowing down, and the start of summer produce not yet ready or limited.
On our farm
Over peak season we are regularly growing up to 30 different varieties of veg, however at this time of year our range decreases due to the warmer weather. We still have a strong supply of our organic salad mix, lettuces, carrot bunches, ginger (so much ginger!), Choi, herbs, kale, chard, zucchini, and more!
The farm is getting lots of nourishment and by utilising crop/bed rotation effectively it means that our soils are getting time to regenerate! Yay! We are getting ready for summer growing which means:
- Watermelon
- Pumpkins
- Tomatoes
- Cucumber
- Zucchini
Veggies
Good Harvest has a network of sister farms we work directly with to bring you the best in season produce. The good news is this time of year sees Asparagus become available (so good!), and Green Beans steadily becoming more abundant before the slowing down for summer. Did you know that Beans can be hand picked or machine picked 😳 Thankfully ours are all hand picked by lovely people which makes them better quality!
Truss tomatoes and Cherry tomatoes are both in good supply at the moment which is awesome for summer salads and yummy pasta dishes :) The team on the farm are getting ready for planting all our tomatoes for the upcoming summer season (we're super excited about this!).
Whilst Broccoli is starting to slow down due to the warmer weather, our friends down south are slowly coming on with supply which, fingers crossed, means a good availability and ideally more accessible price. We're also seeing the yummy baby broccoli become available from our southern growers too!
The QLD season of broccoli and brassicas was severely affected by the flooding earlier in the year which meant all our faves were priced high and limited in supply. Our own farm was impacted by three floods which was quite damaging to our season.
Potatoes, onions and pumpkins have been limited for a little while, again the season affected by the flooding, and constant rains damaging crops in field or making it difficult to harvest. I feel for some of these bigger farms in Lockyer Valley/South East Queensland, they have had such a tough year!
Here's hoping that over the coming weeks supply improves for these staples and we can start to see these more in the signature seasonal boxes. Thankfully Sweet Potato has been super tasty and abundant this year although as summer bears down we may see this slow down but hopefully not too much.
Celery & Zucchini had a rough start to the season but is now readily available again! Cabbages are still a bit hit and miss with supply - as it is warming up we expect these will be less and less available until our Southern growers come in with their season.
Local organic Avocados will slow down soon! They have been so delicious and creamy!
Finally, the ever consistent Carrots have been oh so appreciated this year!
Fruit
October/November is notoriously tricky for supply of organic fruit! I know it's confusing because there's often lots of non organic fruit available in the super markets ☹️
We find ourselves at the end of the local citrus season, meaning we tend to travel south to NSW for our Oranges supply. Apples are still available from our lovely Apple farmer in Stanthorpe - although these will slow soon as he prepares for the new season harvests in January. Bananas have been in good supply however we have noticed some ripening issues of late where they are either too green, or too ripe! Usually around this time of year banana supply slows a little as a late impact of winter - fingers crossed this is minimal :)
Strawberries have well and truly finished for the season this year - it was such a tough season in terms of rain and supply.
We get asked a lot about organic berries! Organic blueberries should start to come on soon and increase in supply through to December. We currently don't have access to an organic raspberry grower however do know of an organic farmer who has recently planted raspberry trees so here's hoping we can see some of these in January!
Pears will slow down in supply unfortunately, they have been so yummy with coconut yoghurt! Pineapples have finished for now but hopefully back soon. The good news is that watermelon will start to become available soon - just in time for summer!
Overall fruit supply is very limited - whilst we do our best to maintain a mix of variety is does get to be a bit limited until summer brings us stonefruit, mangoes and more!
Seasonal availability is always a bit tricky to stay on top of, especially with the weather events of this year! We often times find such a divide in terms of what you see available conventionally at some farmers markets or supermarkets, which causes confusion! This is because there are many more conventional growers compared to organic growers and also conventional growing techniques are used to grow out of the natural season.
As always we encourage you to ask questions of your farmer, market team or green grocer to find out whats in season and nourishing for you and your family.
