Produce: Last Chance for a Taste of Local Summer

By: Crystal Bornmann, Produce Manager, and Allison Carpenter, Community Outreach

We all love to love and appreciate the flavors of local in season produce. There is nothing quite like the sweet flavor of a summer melon, fresh from off a nearby farm. Summer is coming to a close, and that means many of our summer seasonal favorites from our local suppliers will be over and done. So get them while you can!

Here’s what we have: our local melons are the Sharlyn and the papaya dew, which are grown in Grenada by Mountain View Organics. The papaya dew looks like an orange honey dew and tastes very similar. The flesh is orange and firm; the flavor is very sweet. Sharlyns are white on the inside and have a very sweet/musky flavor. We also have ambrosia melons and orchid melons from Full Belly Farm, which is about 3 hours south of here in Guinda, California. The ambrosia melon is orange flesh, very sweet and unique in flavor. The orchids are a type of yellow watermelon, sweet, great texture and very juicy.

Although the cherry tomatoes are not local, they are a summer time favorite of many. By next week we will have local regular tomatoes from Mountain View Organics. Right now we have their zephyr and gold bar squash, zucchini, lemon cucumbers and cucumbers. We will only have one or two more deliveries of their cucumbers and then they are done for the season. We also have their fresh red onions.

From Ashland, Oregon—through Organic Produce Warehouse—we have yellow peaches and Bartlett pears from Valley View Orchard. This particular distributor has been supplying us with local red kale and will be supplying us with local cucumbers next week since Mountain View Organics is almost done.

Mountain View Organics will be our main supplier for winter squash in the next few weeks and through the fall.

Purple cauliflower is few and far between. We get it on Wednesdays from Veritable Vegetable if it’s available. We have dragon fruit, which is rare and grown in California as well as passion fruit. Reed avocados are the king of avocados and in peak season right now. They are creamy and have a wonderful flavor that is not comparable to any avocado.

As always, we have Lava Oasis Micro Greens, which will be available up into the end of Fall. These have been very much a customer favorite.

Well that’s it from the Produce side of things. We hope this will help you when you are looking for the last of in season summer produce from our local distributors. Very soon we will be bringing in our fall produce. Stay tuned and remember to enjoy and love the summer produce while you still can!

Let us know if you have any questions in the comments below.