How To Eat Seasonally
Eating seasonally is better for taste, environment and your pocket. When fruit and veg are in season they’re at their freshest, sweetest and crunchiest, and their abundance and reduced food miles means they’re also reasonably priced. However, the effects of climate change means that traditional food seasons are already shifting and can be shorter, longer, earlier or later than usual. So use this listing as an approximate guide. Best of all, shop at a local independent, such as a greengrocer, farm shop or farmers' market, to find out what is available now and where it was grown.
Following a mild winter, the asparagus season has started early in Hampshire with New Forest Fruit Company harvesting Britain’s earliest crop. The Farm also takes a sustainable and regenerative approach to farming, so tuck into this delicious, local eco-friendly asparagus guilt-free. How do you eat yours? What about steamed and served with a runny bright yolked local egg? Another Hampshire crop in season is watercress, great for pepping up salads and sarnis, but also making a wonderfully vibrant green soup.
For your shopping list, here is a guide to what is usually in season or coming into season now.
Herbs basil, chives, dill.
Salads lettuce, radish, rocket, sorrel, watercress.
Vegetables (early) asparagus, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, celeriac, kale, leeks, mushrooms, new potatoes, onions, purple-sprouting broccoli, salisfy, samphire, spinach, spring greens.
Fruits rhubarb*.
Meats spring lamb, wood pigeon.
Seafood clams, cockles, coley, crab, herring, John Dory, langoustine, lobster, mussels, oysters, plaice, prawn, red mullet, salmon, brown trout, sea trout, shrimp, whelks, winkles.
If you are keen to eat seasonally to support the environment, please buy from local independents, such as butchers, greengrocers, fishmongers, farm shops, delis and village stores who can reassure you about the provenance of the produce they sell.
*actually a vegetable, but used as a fruit typically