Use This Guide To Know When Fruit and Vegetables Are In Season To Save Money

If you are looking to find when fruit and vegetables are in season, then this post is for you! Buying in-season fruit (and vegetables) will not only save you money, but it will ensure the produce you are buying has better nutrition. Have you ever eaten an orange during summer? Now compare that to an orange consumed in winter – it tastes 10x better in winter, and contains twice as many (if not more) nutrition than its summer counterpart.

There are many benefits of eating what’s in season. Let’s start with how it saves you money:

Money Saver:

Buying in season saves you money because the abundance of the crop makes it less expensive. This is especially true when farmers’ markets start popping up in late spring / summer. When there is more of the product available, the cost will be lower, because farmers can afford to lower their prices. For example, buying oranges in summer is incredibly expensive, but in winter you can buy pounds of oranges for under $5. Same goes for pomegranates in winter, versus summer – buying them in winter will be much easier on the wallet than purchasing them in summer.

Variety:

I personally enjoy seasonal variety. After fig season in summer, I’m ready for winter citrus, and then mangoes that start in March. There is more variety than that, of course, but I like the sense of feeling excited for new things to come out as the seasons change. Unlike bananas, which are available all year round.

Better Taste and Nutrition:

A lot of the food that is picked for consumption elsewhere is usually harvested at the wrong time. What I mean by that, is that it is picked before it is truly ripe, which means a poor vitamin/mineral count and makes it harder to digest (enzymes not as bio-available as fruit that is truly ripe). Fruit is meant to be picked at its peak ripe stage, because after it is picked, it doesn’t ripen properly and is no longer connected to source (the tree from which it was picked). Transportation usually also requires irradiation (scanning produce with radiation to kill germs) and preservatives like wax to protect produce while it is refrigerated during travel. In this case, buying locally or growing your own is best.

It is pretty much impossible to eat locally and in season 100% of the time (when I went to Costa Rica, this was in fact, the opposite – all the food I was eating was grown locally and picked the day of!). So what do you do in scenarios like this? Grow your own food! Wherever you can find space, start growing. Whether it is your own herbal garden, porch-garden or backyard garden, starting growing something. You can also visit a local farmers’ market weekly or join a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm. The next best thing is to purchase what is in season somewhere else.

Here is a guide that will help you know what fruit and veggies are in season, when to buy them, and how to save more money!

Guide Via: The Center For Urban Education About Sustainable Agriculture