Vegetables

Having ignored my own advice – given to readers in a past column – I recently ended up paying the price.

At this time of the year, I usually make my annual forecast of the fresh produce markets. I peer deep into my crystal ball and, with uncanny accuracy, predict that...

Every year offers opportunities to gain more experience and understanding of how to improve production.

The casual visitor won’t be aware of it, but for someone like me who is closely associated with markets it is amazing to see the number of people working as...

The name of this column, ‘On the Market Floor’, was chosen for a good reason: the market floor is exactly where you’ll hear all the news in the fresh produce...

Providing a steady supply of quality products when marketing your fruit and vegetables will lead to success.

Crop chemicals are expensive and if herbicide spraying isn't optimised, you get poor value for money, writes Bill Kerr.

We need to take certain precautions when growing cauliflower that aren't as important for cabbages or broccoli, writes Bill Kerr.

Talking to market agents these days can be quite depressing. In the past, there were always people you could rely on to give you a more positive view of current...

Growing vegetables involves multi-tasking. I covered the importance of getting the timing right in my previous article.

While working for a large seed company, I once had a chat with one of the directors, a financial fundi who contributed to steering the company in the right direction.

Vito Rugani always used to say, “Remember the power of the brand!” A legend on the markets,

I’m not privy to the inside story on the strikes experienced in the fruit sector recently. According to what I’ve read, Dutoit Group in the Western Cape and Umbhaba Bananas...

Growing vegetables is highly competitive, demanding and arguably the most difficult branch of agriculture in which to succeed, especially for new entrants.

The move to stock ‘almost perfect’ fruit and vegetables has for many years been an obsession in supermarkets abroad.

Previously, I described how the high mineral content of borehole water could cause mineral build-up on leaf surfaces, with consequences for the application of chemicals.

I’ve often written in this column about how stimulating the fresh produce sector can be.

Here are some guidelines for growing vegetables under drought conditions.

Fresh produce markets have an interesting history. Go back more than 150 years and you’ll find a person called the market master who worked for the local municipality and also...

Just about every farmer would agree that crop rotation is a good thing – and the more diverse the crops in the rotation, the better.