ZUCCHINI BLOSSOMS
These vibrant yellow flowers have a gentle zucchini flavour. Try them stuffed with fresh ricotta, battered and fried, or simply grilled with a bit of olive oil and sea salt. But whatever you do with them, do it fast—they start to shrivel up within a few hours of being picked. Five for $1, early July through September, Ted Thorpe’s stand at Brick Works, Dufferin Grove, Riverdale Farm, Trinity Bellwoods.

PAWPAWS
Native to Southwestern Ontario’s Carolinian forests, the custardy, tropical-tasting fruit (it’s like somebody crossed a mango with pineapple, banana and strawberry) is exceedingly hard to find. Jonathan Forbes, the Wild Foods entrepreneur, secures a small supply in late October from Ernie Grimo, a Niagara orchardist. Says Forbes: “Most people are shocked when they find out these things are indige­nous.” $6–$7 a pound, October, Dufferin Grove.

GARDEN HUCKLEBERRIES
Once a pie and preserve maker’s staple (and today only grown on a few Amish farms in the Kawarthas), these tiny black-skinned berries are nearly flavourless in the raw. But boiled down with lemon and a bit of sugar, they turn intense and delicious, and their colour blooms to electric indigo. $3.50 a quart, August and September, Kawartha Ecological Growers’ stand at BirchCliff, Withrow Park.

BLACK KRIM TOMATOES
Ben and Jessie Sosnicki, the husband and wife team behind Norfolk County’s Sosnicki Organic Produce, plan to sell more than 80 different varieties of heirloom tomatoes this summer and fall, but few of them are quite as coveted as the Black Krim. The tomatoes have dark green mottled tops that give way to dark, almost purplish skin; inside they range from dusty pink to crimson and even black (almost nothing looks better sliced up on a plate). But their taste is their finest attribute by far: it’s dense and intense, with a hit of smoke, a touch of natural saltiness and just enough acid—but not too much—to balance all that flavour out. $2–$3 a pound, August to first frost, Sosnicki Organics, Riverdale, Dufferin Grove, Sorauren Park.

EARLY GOLDEN PLUMS
Other than zucchini blossoms, there’s almost nothing quite as short-lived as a perfect, tree-ripened plum. White Stag Orchards’ organic Early Goldens arrive at the market as fragile as mayflies, bursting with sweet, meaty, unexpectedly fragrant flesh. Orchardist Lou Riklik ripens them until the sugars begin to ferment—he’s got just one Early Golden tree in the back-yard of his suburban home in Guelph. Smallish and yellow and just blushed with pink, it’s what you’d call a wet and noisy fruit. And then, in a week or two at most, they’re gone. $5 a quart, mid-July, BirchCliff, Trinity Bellwoods.

CAVAILLON MELLONS
Widely touted as the finest melons on earth, the small, ribbed, intoxicatingly flavoured Cavaillons are celebrated with melon festivals in France each summer. David Cohlmeyer of Cookstown Greens started growing them two decades ago; they’re so temperamental that Cohlmeyer’s friends have taken to calling them “David’s Folly.” $6–$10 each, mid-August through September, Brick Works.