Power Line Produce in Downtown Long Beach

The Long Beach downtown farmers market, founded in 1980, recently sustained two blows: It had to move half a block to a location with less free parking, and the newer Sunday market at the Long Beach Marina has drawn away many of its more affluent customers. Dale Whitney, the manager, hopes that in a month or so the market will return to its original spot, on the Promenade north of Broadway. As for now, the market continues and still has some good farmers.

Shoppers at the ABC Rhubarb stand sometimes wonder about the farm’s name, since it sells mostly herbs and greens. On Friday, for example, its display included a fine salad mix, dill, hothouse-grown basil, fresh aloe leaves and rue, an aromatic herb used in salads and for seasoning. Family patriarch Martin Baltazar, who presides with his daughter Lilly, explained that when he came to California in 1965, he grew rhubarb. He later expanded into herbs, which he now farms under the power lines in Bell Gardens on land leased from an oil company in Carson and on his own property in Fillmore. “ABC,” by the way, came from the initials of his son; the farm still harvests rhubarb in autumn.

Among other veggie vendors, the Nakamura Farm of Oxnard sold organic fava beans, red and gold beets, leeks and spinach. Smith Farms had artichokes, fresh Maui onions, slender asparagus and nice red-leaf and green-leaf lettuce from Irvine and Fountain Valley.

Karl Nejely of Fallbrook sold buttery Fuerte avocados, as well as custardy Booth cherimoyas and golden ripe sapotes, which taste like banana flan. This season the navel orange crop in the Central Valley was small, so the individual fruits grew exceptionally large. Jim Van Foeken of Ivanhoe had truly gigantic specimens, some weighing as much as 2 1/2 pounds, but his medium-size fruits, sold in bags, offered better flavor and texture. His Fairchild mandarins were very sweet and juicy, much better than the main commercial crop of this variety, mostly harvested in November from the Coachella Valley.

Desert-grown grapefruit, however, is now at peak quality, judging by those offered by Rudy Yanez of Thermal; the Rio Reds are darker and sweeter, though the Rubys had more intense flavor. He also sold medjool, honey and deglet noor dates.

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Long Beach downtown farmers market, Long Beach Boulevard between Broadway and 1st Street, Fridays 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. (closed April 12).