health
Spring's Bounty: What to Sow, Plant, Prune, Harvest, and Eat
From tender broad beans and cheek-puckering rhubarb to nutty new potatoes, make the most of the season's best.
TL;DR
- Elderflower can be picked on sunny May days for cordial or infused in gin.
- Yorkshire rhubarb is celebrated, with raw stalks recommended dipped in stem ginger syrup.
- Fresh asparagus, whether steamed or roasted, offers the fullest flavor.
- Radishes and their leaves are best enjoyed with softened butter and sea salt.
- Jersey Royals are noted as the most famous spring new potatoes, grown on seaweed-fertilized slopes.
- Pea shoots offer a sweet, nutty flavor and are best dressed simply with olive oil and salt.
- Broad beans are enjoyed raw in Italy with pecorino, olive oil, and lemon.
- Gardening tasks include sowing tomatoes, chillies, courgettes, and cucumbers undercover by mid-March.
- Outdoor sowing from May includes broad beans, salad leaves, carrots, peas, beetroot, spinach, chard, French beans, and sweetcorn.
- Plant early potatoes in March and main crop from April, with early rhubarb harvested by twisting.
- Prune stone fruits like plums and cherries from late April after flowering.
- Potatoes should be earthed up, and soft-leaved perennial herbs like lovage and chives should be cut back to invigorate.