what's in season: april

favourite spring flowers!

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.   
You know how it is with an April day.
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud come over the sunlit arch,
And wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March.
Robert Frost - Two Tramps in Mud Time - 1926

April is known as a "cruel month", not least becauseit is rather lean in terms of seasonal British produce. Stores of British fruit and vegetables are coming to an end and the new crops of vegetables are not up to maximum strength yet. Fortunately all the greens are beginning to appear, such as lettuce and watercress as well as spinach and broccoli, so it’s not all doom and gloom.

We seem to have good and bad days; a capricious month of bright sunshine and grey clouds. It may be the time of the proverbial "April showers", but spring is most definitely here and the garden is coming to life. There are still warming winter stews to cook as well as satisfying soups. And since Easter is around the corner, an excuse for lots of cakes and hot cross buns (as if you needed much of an excuse!)

vegetables, herbs and wild greens:
asparagus, basil, broccoli (purple sprouting), cabbages (various green varieties), carrots, cauliflower, chard, chicory, chives, dandelions, dill, endive, fat hen, greens (spring and winter), hogweed shoots, hop shoots, jersey royal new potatoes, kale, leeks, lettuces and salad leaves, meadowsweet, mint, morel mushrooms, nettles, onions, parsley, potatoes (main crop), radishes, rosemary, samphire, sea kale, sea spinach, sorrel, spinach, spring onions, watercress, wild chervil (aka cow parsley), wild garlic (ransoms), wild rocket

fruit and nuts:
bramley apples, rhubarb

meat and game:
beef, chicken, pork, rabbit, spring lamb, turkey, wood pigeon

fish and shellfish:
cockles, cod, coley, conger eel, crab (brown and cock), dab, dover sole, haddock, john dory, lemon sole, lobster, mackerel, mussels, oysters, pollack, prawn, salmon (wild), scallops, sea bass, sea trout, shrimp, whelks, whitebait