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This wet winter has been just the tonic for healthy greens.
Peninsula Organic Farmgate is one of several primary producers that sell their home-grown foods direct to the public at Dandenong Market.
This season, rainbow chard, silver beet, kale, broccoli and lettuces, as well as leeks, radishes, beetroots and heirloom carrots are being picked at the seller’s farms in Baxter on the Mornington Peninsula and Barham near the Murray River.
The farms are four-and-a-half hours’ drive apart, offering starkly different climates and growing conditions.
The reality for farmers is they are often at the mercy of the weather.
“Our carrots have taken forever to get growing this winter. It’s been too wet,” proprietor Tash Shields says.
“At our farm on the Murray, it’s usually quite warm. But we’ve had more rain than for the six years we’ve owned the property.”
Last year, Peninsula Organic Farmgate set up their stall in the deli section of Dandenong Market. It also home-delivers across Melbourne’s South East.
The produce is certified organic, meaning it’s verified as free from chemical pesticides and fertilisers.
The Baxter farm was long dormant when Ms Shields and her husband bought them in 2009. After a year “in conversion”, the farm’s organic status was authenticated.
“By farming organically, we seem to be getting less diseases and pests. You see frogs and other animals take care of the bugs.
“They eat some of the crops but it’s like a natural ecosystem.”
The voracious cabbage moths are avoided by delaying their cabbages – so they’re grown outside of the moths’ life cycles.
Another Peninsula farmer at Dandenong Market is Taylors Orchards.
Most of its fresh apples, pears, peaches and nectarines hail from its 60-year orchards in Tyabb.
Proprietor Gary Taylor is carrying on the tradition from his parents.
Their produce has been sold at Dandenong Market since the mid-1980s. After supplying other market sellers, the orchard set up its own stall in 2003.
They supplement their offerings with fruit from other local orchards within 60 kilometres of Dandenong.
Triple Q Farm has sold freshly harvested eggs at Dandenong Market for more than 15 years.
Each market day at 3am, the farmers collect their eggs and care for their hundreds of free-range chickens.
It sells eggs of all shapes and sizes, including duck and quail eggs.
Another local producer at the market is Hart’s Honey, which harvests from its 600 hives in Lilydale as well as across Victoria and NSW.
Joza Hart moves his portable hives between his properties to allow bees to collect nectar from different trees and flowers, such as yellow box, ironbark, stringybark and orange blossom.
Each of the honey has different properties and uses – such as helping a cold, enhancing a cheeseboard or making a great spread on warm toast.
Dandenong Market is celebrating its primary producers as part of National Farmers Market Week.
