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Details:
Eating seasonally has dramatic and far-reaching implications. For a start,
the food is less likely to have travelled as far to meet demand. Think of apples - in season for a very short time, September
and October - yet they appear on our supermarket shelves day in, day out. These apples have been flown over from the USA,
South America, New Zealand... By only eating food when it is in season in our own country, we are helping to contribute to
a greener environment by saving food miles.
Eating seasonal food also means that we begin to understand our food better,
and appreciate the fruits of each season. It is, if you think about it, completely natural to enjoy sweet and fruity tomatoes
and strawberries in August; and the more dense and earthy root vegetables such as turnips and squash in January. To eat seasonally
is to eat the food we should crave naturally!
It is really tough to get used to eating seasonally, as we have all become
used to eating what we want, when we want it, irrespective of seasonality. Here is a month-by-month guide to seasonal food
in the UK to get you going:
SO WHAT SHOULD WE DO?
Is it practical to eat only seasonal
food? Here's our three-point plan to eating/buying and cooking food with a clear conscience as far as the seasons are concerned...
1) You can eat an awful lot more seasonal food. You can eat salad leaves
in summer and through to early autumn and we can eat British asparagus, strawberries and tomatoes in summer; new potatoes
in early summer; and cabbage in autumn. It's tasty, nutritious and it saves fuel for transporting vegetables.
2) You can try cutting out some imported food. For example, stick to
traditional British apples, rather than foreign varieties. Have a go at preserving more food through traditional methods such as pickling (ideal for onion or red cabbage), by using
seasonal produce in chutneys and jams or by freezing (great for Bramley apple pies, apple sauces, vegetable soups etc).
3) Finally you can realise that non seasonal foods should be seen as
an occasional treat, rather than part of everyday cooking. Those Kenyan mange tout may be just what you want to give a bit
of variety to your diet in the middle of winter, but it seems wrong to eat them during the rest of year when there are excellent
seasonal alternatives, grown in this country.
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WHATS IN SEASON:
- An abundant month for fresh organic fruit and veg. Summer salad leaves, tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes and
herbs make tasty salads, especially if you’ve grown them yourself. Soft fruit like strawberries, gooseberries, cherries
and raspberries are ripe.
- Fruit and Vegetables: asparagus, aubergines, broad beans, cherries, courgettes, elderflowers,
gooseberries, lettuce, peas, peppers, redcurrants, strawberries, tayberries
Meat, Poultry, Game: Welsh lamb
Fish: crab, grey mullet, salmon
VEGETABLES
- Continue to sow French Beans, Peas and salad crops in the soil
- Continue to plant out Cucumbers, Marrows, Pumpkins and Squashes
- Plant out Brussels Sprouts and Winter Cabbages
- Plant out Tomatoes
- Plant out Leeks
- Plant self Blanching Celery
FRUIT:
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In summer, fruit trees and shrubs quickly become thirsty – you’ll need to water once a week if there’s
no rain. Help them to retain water by mulching, or by pushing a tube or empty bottle into the soil, enabling you to send water
directly to the roots. When pears, apples and gooseberries appear, you might want to thin them by picking some unripe fruits.
This helps the remaining fruit to reach a good size, and you can usually cook the unripe pieces.
Lawn care Spring:
- As the grass starts to grow you will need to prepare your lawnmower prior to starting to mow your lawn. It
is very important in early spring that you set the mowing height of the lawnmowers blade quite high, taking no more that one
quarter of the length of the grass off at a time, otherwise the lawn will become stressed. A little and often approach is
better when lawn mowing in spring. As the grass grows faster as we move further into spring you can increase the mowing frequency
and gradually reduce the height of cut of the mower to give the desired finish.
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