March is the "spring tasting" season, and Shandong's spring vegetables are hitting the market fresh, with a wide variety. While enriching the "spring flavors" on consumers' palates, they have also become a sought-after "darling" for rural income growth.

On March 6, the reporter saw at the Qilibao Comprehensive Vegetable Wholesale Market in Jinan that spring vegetables such as shepherd's purse, mianmiancai (a type of vegetable), and taicai were clustered on the stalls, with clusters of "green" attracting citizens to buy. Online, various fresh food e-commerce platforms have also quietly "launched" various seasonal spring vegetables.

Market demand is strong, and harvesting is busy in the fields, providing a continuous supply. In recent days, the Xiangwei Toon Planting Base in Qingzhou, Weifang City, has been full of "toon" vitality. In the greenhouses, clusters of tender toon sprouts "bloom" on the tips of branches. Base manager Shi Xiangwei shuttles among them, busy picking this year's first batch of toon.

In recent years, Shi Xiangwei has tried transplanting toon seedlings into greenhouses in winter and strictly controlling the temperature and humidity inside, so that the toon, which originally came to market around Qingming each year, is launched earlier. "We have four greenhouses of more than 1,000 square meters each, with more than 200,000 toon saplings planted in total, and now we can pick more than 200 jin per day," Shi Xiangwei told the reporter. At present, toon sprouts are mainly sold to cities such as Qingdao and Yantai as well as major hotels, and the overall benefit is quite considerable.

"We have transferred more than 10 mu of land in Qigang Village, Malinggang Town, and rented four greenhouses, planting seasonal vegetables in rotation, including shepherd's purse, bok choy, and garland chrysanthemum. Seasonal vegetables are available for market all year round," said He Xianchen, the person in charge of the greenhouses. At present, the garland chrysanthemum on the market is mainly sold to nearby supermarkets and wholesale markets.

Walking into the vegetable planting base of Li Changli, a major vegetable grower in Jingma Village, Hutun Town, Chiping District, Liaocheng City, 26 high-standard plastic greenhouses are neatly arranged. Local villagers are harvesting lush spinach in the greenhouses. After harvesting, bundling, and weighing, bags of spinach are neatly stacked on trucks, waiting to be sent to the market.

"This year, spinach has been planted in more than 20 greenhouses, about 30 mu, with a yield of more than 4,000 jin per mu, and each jin can sell for about 1.5 yuan," Li Changli introduced. During the spinach harvest period, nearby villagers all come to the base to help harvest vegetables, and each person can earn dozens or up to 100 yuan a day. In recent years, Chiping District has adapted to local conditions, guided the public to develop specialty planting, carefully built specialty agriculture, gradually expanded the planting scale, realized the industrialization and diversification of vegetable planting, and further driven villagers' employment and collective income growth.

As the weather gradually warms up, the tomatoes, toon sprouts, and peppers in the greenhouses of Anjiazhuang Village, Shengzhuang Town, Taishan District, Tai'an City, have also ushered in the harvest season. In recent years, Anjiazhuang Village has focused on the development of the agricultural industry, especially vegetable planting. This year, the village has adopted scientific planting techniques and management methods to ensure the quality and yield of vegetables.

Zhang Yibin, operations manager of the Anjiazhuang Village Agricultural Development Cooperative, introduced that a batch of toon sprouts recently matured in the greenhouses and was sold to the wholesale market at 20 yuan per jin, adding a sum of income to the village collective. At the same time, the village collective hires local villagers to manage the vegetable greenhouses, providing employment opportunities for the villagers. "Villagers also learn new technologies and new management experience by participating in greenhouse management."

According to the "Spring Vegetable Consumption Observation" released by the JD Consumption and Industry Development Research Institute at the end of February this year, shepherd's purse, choy sum, spring bamboo shoots, ercai (a type of vegetable), and others occupy the "C position" on the hot-selling list of seasonal spring vegetables, and the sales of artemisia selengensis, pea shoots, ercai, edamame beans, and willow artemisia buds increased by 250%, 172%, 132%, 97%, and 86% year on year, respectively. Those born in the 1980s and 1990s have become the main force in spring vegetable consumption, with their combined sales accounting for 70%.