March

Chinatown's produce stands offer many items that make only fleeting seasonal appearances, often so brief that many chefs scarcely have time to figure out how to cook them properly before they disappear for another year. One example is water spinach, a common vegetable in Asian cuisine.

Recommended by the N.I.A.B, Turnip ‘Snowball’ is a very popular first-class, globe variety with solid flesh and a juicy, sweet, mild flavour. They are a fast crop, being ready in just five to eight weeks from sowing. With pure white flesh as its name suggests, Snowball is superb for both table and exhibition.

Purple Top Milan is a classic Italian heirloom variety and is still as popular as ever. Highly ornamental, it has smooth creamy-white flat roots with bright purple shoulders and pure white flesh. A strap-leaved variety, quick to mature and early cropping, it is an ideal 'catch crop' between slower growing vegetables.

Turnip ‘Goldana’ is an improved version of the popular turnip Golden Ball. A maincrop variety that produces uniform round golden roots with tender creamy-yellow flesh. They are much sweeter than regular turnips with an excellent flavour. They can be harvested as a mini-veg or left to mature.

Turkish Rocket is a robust, fast-growing plant and a great, herbaceous addition to permaculture projects, it is one of the most hardy and long-lived of all winter salad greens. It is blessedly simple to grow. Easy to raise, never needs weeding or watering and goes on for ever.

Tomato 'Yellow Pear' is a popular pear shaped cocktail tomato, an open-pollinated heirloom variety that produces large indeterminate plants that are very productive, the fruits grow in large luscious clusters. They have a sweet fresh taste and a beautiful yellow colour, perfect for salads or for snacking.

Bred specifically to be grown in containers.'Tiny Tim' is a surprisingly tiny plant, growing to around 30 to 35cm tall. It can be grown as a potted plant any time of the year and doesn't need support. Perfect for wherever garden space is limited and outstanding for growing in containers. A very attractive plant that looks beautiful in hanging baskets or window boxes.

Tomato ‘Sweetie’ is a fantastic new variety, a super-sweet red cherry tomato with high sugar content and full bodied tomato flavour. The plants are early, vigorous and reliable, producing crack resistant, high quality fruit even in adverse conditions. 65 days.

This French heritage variety is famous throughout Europe, Marmande is the favourite large-fruited tomato of Provence. A classic beefsteak variety, 'Super Marmande' is large, juicy, well flavoured fruit and a great improvement over an already excellent variety.

Tomato 'St Pierre' has been named after the French island off the southern coast of Newfoundland which explains this tomatoes cold hardiness. Reliable and disease resistant it produces superior quality, full flavoured fruits. Often the first standard tomato to fruit and will continue right up until the first frost of the season.

'San Marzano' is a classic plum/paste type of tomato from Italy, it produces clusters of delicious, elongated fruit.. This variety is a compact and prolific producer and performs best if staked. This heritage tomato is one of the jewels in Campania's crown.

Roma VF is a traditional plum tomato that gives incredible yields of very richly flavoured, pear-shaped fruit. These fruits are meaty with few seeds and not much juice, perfectly suited to cooking, but delicious enough to eat fresh. The vines fruit heavily, occasionally needing some support.

This is a lovely variety of tomato which, whilst you would describe it as a cherry tomato, produces fruits in the shape of a pear. Tomato ‘Red Pear’ produce small, solid-bodied fruits that are have a sweet and flavoursome with soft and velvety textured flesh. Perfect for salads, the shape creating additional interest to any dish.

Tomato 'Minibel' is a compact variety that produces bite-sized cherry tomatoes with an irresistible, sweet flavour. This stocky determinate, or bush variety grows 35 to 45cm tall and is suitable for growing in pots or containers.