David Stewart: Cherry season well under way with impressive sales

Fresh, sweet cherries just picked from the tree.

Last week's gentle rain was warmly greeted by all vegetable crops around the North Island.

The soil was getting a touch dry after all those hot sunny days and the asparagus and strawberries in particular are much happier now with a bit of moisture to feed on.

The cherry season is well under way with a nice selection of both Hawke's Bay and Blenheim fruit available.

The first of the Blenheim cherries arrived on the weekend and sales have been impressive.

This early Blenheim fruit is the Samba variety, large, hard and crisp beautiful eating cherries. To die for is how they were sold to me and the grower was right.

Hawke's Bay stone fruit supplies are improving daily with a good selection of royal rosa apricots, early mayglo nectarines, early crest peaches and Wilson's early plums.

The royal rosa apricots will only be here for another few days and then we will see a gap until the sundrop variety is here for Christmas.

Strawberry supplies will be good this week so please indulge with reasonable prices and beautiful berries to enjoy.

Blueberry prices are improving and raspberry and blackberry volumes are slowly increasing in numbers.

The most popular green vegetables this week are asparagus, round beans, flat beans, broccoli, courgettes, green peas and sweet corn.

This is a nice time of the year with such a good selection of tasty produce available.

Cabbages, cauliflowers, celery, spinach and leeks continue to sell well for this time of year and the sales of eggplants are impressive to say the least.

All salad vegetables are in good supply with low prices on most lines including avocados, capsicums, cucumbers, lettuce and tomatoes.

The tomato situation has been quite interesting over the last few weeks with large volumes available and very low prices on offer.

It will finish at some time but in the meantime enjoy the bargains on offer.

The Pukekohe root crops have struggled all season with low volumes on both carrots and potatoes, seeing high prices in the market place.

The Pukekohe carrot growers are not getting the volumes out of the ground as in past years, hence the short supply and high prices.

Your best potatoes are either the Oamaru jersey bennes or Pukekohe agria potatoes but again you will find firm prices on both.

Pukekohe brown and red onions are improving daily and we have seen a slight price increase over the last few days on both Hawke's Bay crown pumpkins and Northland kumara, quite typical with demand in the lead-up to Christmas.

The last of this season's US pomegranates are in the shops now and the first shipment of Californian navel oranges arrived late last week to join the lemons and limes on offer.

For this week's treat look out for Ecuadorian mangos, Dole tropical gold pineapples from the Philippines along with Australian R2E2 mangos and melons.

Remember to buy what is in season and on special.

- David Stewart is the owner of The Fresh Market Gate Pa and home delivery service mygreengrocer.co.nz