This week sees a couple of traditionally “winter” veg make their return before you might expect… Dendra Market Gardens grow beautiful wombok – an Asian cabbage variety that unlike the more common cabbage varieties is almost entirely edible with sweet, soft ribs – and in fact it was those same wombok that were the reason I initially made contact with Maurice to strike up a business relationship, unaware at the time of all the other great lines that the farm produces. Cabbage, whilst often eaten during the winter, puts on growth a lot faster in the warmer months and cabbage harvested in the winter are generally planted in warmer weather, but stores and over-winters quite well.
Grown for Taste have utilised their specialist growing techniques to grow butternut pumpkin suited for early harvest at a smaller size – and a small pumpkin sounded to us like a perfect addition to our smaller $20 boxes! Pumpkin, whilst very similar to zucchini, matures later and needs to be harvested when fully ripe and dry to ensure long term storage, which is why many varieties are harvested in autumn.
With the road through to Franklin now open, David and Dianne’s fruit are selling like hotcakes, but we were still able to secure 30kg of red plums to share around the fruit supplements this week, along with arguably the most delicious of all plums (greengages) from Coal Valley Orchard, and strawberries from DM Jennings & Sons.
