Rich plums and ripe tomatoes: Australia’s best-value fruit and veg for February
Tomatoes ripe for cooking, cheap watermelon and cucumbers for $2 a piece – but it’s the final call for apricots, cherries and mangoesGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailJuicy watermelon, deep-purple plums and ripe roma tomatoes are some of the vibrant fruit and veg highlights this month, says Graham Gee, senior buyer at the Happy Apple in Melbourne.“Tomatoes are plentiful, in particular the saucing varieties,” he says.“Roma varieties are sold nice and ripe, ready to make passata.” Cooking tomatoes are roughly $2 a kilo at the Happy Apple, with Australian field tomatoes going for about $5 a kilo in supermarkets.Watermelon is “very cheap”, says Michael Hsu, operational manager at Sydney’s Panetta Mercato.
He’s selling it for $1 to $2 a kilo.Combine both red fruits in Rukmini Iyer’s quick and easy watermelon and tomato gazpacho or in her spiced watermelon, tomato and cucumber salad.Sami Tamimi uses watermelon in this salty side dish with fried halloumi and za’atar, or blitz it with sugar, ginger and mint in Benjamina Ebuehi’s granita.“Right now is a good time for rockmelon too,” says Hsu.Whole rockmelon is $3.
50 in supermarkets, and $2 to $3 each at Panetta in Sydney’s inner west.Stone fruits of all kinds are still good value, says Hsu.Peaches and nectarines are roughly $2 to $3 a kilo, or $6 a kilo for bigger fruits, he says.But the stone fruit he’s most excited about this month is the rich purple queen garnet plums, grown in Victoria.“Everybody raves about them because of their antioxidants,” says Hsu.
“They’re sweet and have a purple-black juice.”Queen garnets are $8 to $10 a kilo, or supermarkets are selling them for roughly 70c each.Their season is short, says Hsu, “so pick them up while you can”.Make the most of their vivid colour with Helen Goh’s plum and star anise frangipane tart.More commonly available red-skinned plums are cheaper still, around $6 a kilo.
Red capsicum prices have “dropped dramatically”.says Hsu.At their scarcest, around Christmas time, they were selling for $14 a kilo, significantly more than green and yellow caps.They’re now below the $10 mark, but Gee says to watch the price depending on where they’re grown.“A lot of them are grown in South Australia, which gets really hot,” says Gee, and the extreme weather can affect their price.
Queensland capsicums are $3 to $4 a kilo, according to Hsu, or $2 each (controversially) in supermarkets.Alice Zaslavsky uses crimson-red capsicum in her garlic peppers with creamy white bean dip, topped with fetta and mopped up with soft bread; while Rukmini Iyer’s recipe turns roasted red capsicums into a smooth pasta sauce.Cucumbers are very good value this month, says Hsu.Lebanese cucumbers, grown in New South Wales, have “come back in price to $2 to $3 a kilo”.Continental cucumbers are about $2 each, says Gee.
Spice them up with Felicity Cloake’s crunchy Sichuan salad.Dutch carrots are about $5 a bunch in supermarkets, which Hsu says will drop to around $2 a bunch.Eggplants are around $2 to $3 each, and zucchini is $1 to $2 each, or $3.90 per kilo in supermarkets.Caulilini, also known as fioretto – which looks like a cross between a cauliflower and broccolini – is another highlight.
“You’re looking at about $5 a kilo,” says Hsu.“So they’ve halved in price.”Reed avocados are coming to market, says Gee.Larger, rounder and often creamier than hass, they can be “tricky” because “you don’t think they’re ripe and then suddenly they are,” he says.Hass avocados are $2 each in supermarkets, but reed avocados will come in towards the end of the month.
“Mangoes are on their last legs,” says Hsu, but late-season varieties like keitt, which are greener than kensington prides, or palmer and honey gold, are still good to eat,“Super-ripe mangoes are great for smoothies,” says Gee,Keitt and palmer mangoes are selling for $2,90 each in supermarkets, with honey gold at $3 to $3,50 each.
It’s also the end of the season for apricots and cherries, so they’re pricier than usual or harder to find.Soft leaf vegetables have suffered in summer’s extreme heat and floods, says Hsu.English spinach and coriander are “sort of wiped out”, he says, or very expensive.Parsley, basil and other herbs may be affected too, says Gee, but we’ll know more in around six weeks.“With the weather, strawberries are taking a knock at the moment,” says Gee.
“But that will change pretty quickly.” Passionfruit is “on the more expensive side”, too.“We haven’t had the croppings we normally have with those,” he says.Buy:Avocado Caulilini (fioretto) Cucumbers Dutch carrots Eggplant Grapes Green beans Nectarines Peaches Plums Red capsicum – prices have dropped Rockmelon Tomatoes WatermelonWatch:Apricots Asparagus Cherries Mangoes StrawberriesAvoid:Coriander English spinach Passionfruit
Winter Olympics 2026: latest medal table for Milano Cortina
The Winter Olympics returns to Italy for the first time in two decades. From the fashion capital of Milan to the dramatic peaks of Cortina d’Ampezzo, the Milano Cortina Games – the first to be co-hosted by two cities – will stretch across northern Italy blending world-class winter sport with a strong sense of history and ambition.The medal table prioritises the number of gold medals won. If countries have the same number of gold medals, the order is then dictated by which has the most silvers, and finally bronze if the numbers are still identical. Sixteen sports and more than 110 gold medals await, from the raw speed of alpine skiing and bobsleigh to the tactical endurance of biathlon and cross-country
Winter Olympics results from Milano Cortina 2026
The Winter Olympics returns to Italy for the first time in two decades. From the fashion capital of Milan to the dramatic peaks of Cortina d’Ampezzo, the Milano Cortina Games – the first to be co-hosted by two cities – will stretch across northern Italy blending world-class winter sport with a strong sense of history and ambition.Sixteen sports and more than 110 gold medals await, from the raw speed of alpine skiing and bobsleigh to the tactical endurance of biathlon and cross-country. Alpine fans will once again be drawn to Mikaela Shiffrin, still redefining excellence across the technical disciplines.Figure skating returns with its familiar blend of artistry and pressure, led by the American phenomenon Ilia Malinin, whose boundary-pushing jumps continue to reshape the sport, while Team GB hope that Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson grasp their opportunity to win Britain’s first figure skating medal since Jayyne Torvill and Christopher Dean in 1994
Winter Olympics: full schedule for Milano Cortina 2026
The Winter Olympics returns to Italy for the first time in two decades. From the fashion capital of Milan to the dramatic peaks of Cortina d’Ampezzo, the Milano Cortina Games – the first to be co-hosted by two cities – will stretch across northern Italy blending world-class winter sport with a strong sense of history and ambition.Sixteen sports and more than 110 gold medals await, from the raw speed of alpine skiing and bobsleigh to the tactical endurance of biathlon and cross-country. Alpine fans will once again be drawn to Mikaela Shiffrin, still redefining excellence across the technical disciplines.Figure skating returns with its familiar blend of artistry and pressure, led by the American phenomenon Ilia Malinin, whose boundary-pushing jumps continue to reshape the sport, while Team GB hope that Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson grasp their opportunity to win Britain’s first figure skating medal since Jayyne Torvill and Christopher Dean in 1994
Cool Runnings 2.0: Jamaica’s bobsleigh crew want their own Hollywood ending
Chris Stokes, part of the 1988 team that inspired a film, is setting lofty goals as head of Jamaica’s bobsleigh federationIt did not make so much as a ripple outside of its minor sporting niche, but something particularly unusual occurred in the bobsleigh world earlier this year. Upon turning up in the New York outpost of Lake Placid for their final Winter Olympics warm-up competition, Jamaica’s four-man bobsleigh team were informed they were not allowed to take part. A hat-trick of gold medals over the preceding few weeks had seen them rise too high in the world rankings to take their customary place on the second-tier North American Cup circuit. They had simply become too good.In the overwhelming majority of countries, the Winter Olympics is an assortment of sporting oddities held in an alternative climate that might pique attention every four years
The Spin | India’s dominance looms over faster and more furious T20 World Cup
In the immortal words of Brenda from Bristol, not another one. Between 17 October 2021, the start of the tournament in the United Arab Emirates, and 8 March 2026, the date of this year’s final, four T20 World Cups will have been squeezed into four years, four months and 19 days.If they come along more regularly even than British general elections – to which Brenda produced her timeless reaction in 2017 – they at least have more interesting results: the past five have had five different winners and the past three six different finalists. What’s more, though not much time has passed since the last one ended with India beating South Africa in Barbados, it seems to have been long enough for the game to shift into a fresh and exhilarating new gear.It is too soon to be drawing conclusions about the state of the game in 2026, but in 21 T20 internationals in the first month of this year 6,960 runs were scored at 9
Ten athletes from Team USA to watch at the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics
Mikaela Shiffrin has surpassed Vonn’s record haul of World Cup wins and staked her claim as the GOAT. But Vonn has a solid claim to be the best ever in the speed events (downhill, super-G), and she has been racing exclusively in those disciplines since returning from retirement, surging to the top of the World Cup downhill standings at age 41. She has a score to settle with the sport’s biggest stage – her lifetime total of three Olympic medals (one gold) would probably be higher if not for a horror crash in practice in 2006 and injuries that either limited or outright excluded her from other Games. After some selection drama in the team combined event in last year’s world championships, it seems inconceivable that Vonn and Shiffrin, both of whom have had some misfortune in the Olympics, would not be paired up to form Alpine skiing’s equivalent of the 1992 basketball Dream Team. Vonn was in a nasty crash last weekend but it seems that she will be fit to take part in Italy
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