GO BEYOND FOUR SEASONS

EARLY

Round Courgettes
Mouries, Provence
Apr - Sep

Laurent experiments with different varieties in Provence, always growing with minimum intervention to find courgettes best suited to his land with maximum flavour. His two round varieties have soft seeds and creamy flesh. He picks them daily, catching each at just the right size.

Laurent’s land is just south of the Alpilles, a low mountain range that offers protection from the cold winds of the Mistral. Here, his courgettes can take full advantage of the Mediterranean sunshine but a fairly cold start to the season meant the crops were slow to come on. Now, with consistently warmer days, he’s seeing good volumes.

We also source his Yellow Courgettes, a variety less commonly grown as skins can easily wrinkle and they generally need extra vigilance. Laurent keeps a watchful eye, picking regularly from the plant to encourage more fruits to form and hopefully stretching out the season until October.

LATE

Gariguette
Moissac, Occitanie
Feb - Jun

With much warmer temperatures heading into their final weeks, these should be some of the best harvests of Gariguette as the berries increase in sugar and aromatic intensity. Grown directly in soil, flavour this good can only come from land that is well cared for.

Alexandre took over his strawberry fields from his cousin Chantale, who retired at the end of last year. He grows a smaller amount of Gariguette and a larger crop of round varieties — Cléry and Flair — all grown directly in soil with no treatment, and for the most part under small tunnels. Chantale had a reputation for flavour amongst local growers, something that Alexandre is working hard to maintain.