Seasonality...

Of course we won't ask you about your swede, News.

I agree about the greens lasting all winter though, and I bet that a slaw was never heard of!

We grew extra leeks when we realised that five packets of onion sets had all struggled and died away!

The swede didn't though, but you asked me not to mention them, so I won't talk about them at all!

How about your Norways then...;0)

Or carrots and parsnips (mice) 

Seasonality of the veg produced on our allotment, helps avoid the repitition of cooking.
It keeps the mind fresher thinking of different recipes for different times of the year.

Seasonality has become much more important to me in the last few year's and I can put it down in a large part to me takeing a much larger intrest in cooking,preserving etc.I've kept a diary over the last years of when I've sown stuff and when I harvest so I can tweek some sowings so they don't overlap too much with other stuff which might lead to gluts and time's of nowt.It will be handy next year as I've got hold of a small field so I hope to produce much more of my own veg.Apart from the veg you can store it's nice to have something fresh from the garden and ask yourself 'What can I do with this'.

Next year i'm planning to think more about pea production to allow for a longer season and to have more frozen.I just love them.Brassicas are also important to me and I've almost manager a 12 month supply of variouse brassicas though the kids aren't quite as enthusiastic about it as I am.

One thing I don't think you can be seasonal with is the fruit.You just have to take them when mother nature is ready though if I have the space and time and more importantly the money I would like to experiment with early/midseason/late and everbearing strawberries and raspberries next year.Another thing thats important to me and really seasonal is collecting wild stuff.You can't get more seasonal then that.

If nothing else seasonality keeps your'e tastebuds awake and makes you apreciate flavour more I think.

Did you watch Hugh Fearnley's veg programme tonight? Some very good veg ideas there for the keen cooks among us

PSB is the most expensive supermarket veg so worth growing your own.  I think it's dearer pound for pound that asparagus

Since returning I have been making note of where the sweet chestnut trees are but I am a complete coward when it comes to mushrooms. Does anyone know of a good guide to British mushrooms; it seems such a shame to waist this free food? 

We've got a little book by Roger Phillips, called The Photographic Guide to Identify Comman and Important Mushrooms. We find it very good for identification. I remember when I was a kid I used to pick loads of mushrooms from the fields.  These days, I live surrounded by fields and spend quite a lot of time walking through them, but I can't remember the last time I saw a field mushroom

Yes, fungi come in a fabulous range of weird and wonderful shapes and colours too. When walking round one of the National Trust estates once I saw one of those wonderful bright red ones with yellow spots, looked exactly like a Walt Disney drawing.

I wonder why field mushrooms are so much less common now. I guess it could be down to pollution, herbicides, damage caused by too much picking, or a combination of all of the above. Maybe it's not widespread and it's just in my local area that they're so rare, though the lane where I live is pretty unspoilt, all pastureland with no arable crops, no obvious use of herbicides and very little traffic. There's an awful lot of moss about, and a tree surgeon did tell me once that's a good indication of good air quality.