How to select springtime fruits and vegetables

(AFP PHOTO / ANP / LEX VAN LIESHOUT)

The greatest food trends right now involve seasonal eating and fresh farm-to-table ingredients; spring is an exciting time to create fresh simple recipes by looking to your garden or local fresh markets.

It is important to know how to select the best spring and local ingredients, namely foods that are ripe for eating during March, April and May in the Northern hemisphere. Various sites and blogs including YumSugar, Food+Wine and Ceres Secrets, offer guides, recipes and know-how for making healthy spring meals.

Ceres Secrets, a seasonal food blog, offers a guide to help determine the best time to purchase your produce:

Available during early spring
Baby lettuce mixes
Broccoli
Broccoli raab
Fava beans
Fennel
Garden peas/Petit pois
Mustard greens
New potatoes and then other varieties
Radishes
Ramps
Snow peas
Sugar snap peas
Available during mid-spring
Asparagus
Amaranth greens
Artichokes
Arugula/Rocket
Carrots
Celeriac Root
Chives 
Collards
Dandelion greens
Fiddlehead ferns
Garlic
Green onions, vidalias & other varieties
Lemons
Mangoes
Pineapple
Rhubarb
Sorrel
Spinach
Turnips
Watercress
Available during late spring
Apricots
Blueberries
Boysenberries
Cardoons
Chard
Cherries 
Loganberries
Olallieberries
Plums
Pluots
Raspberries
Strawberries

YumSugar, a food community blog, has a short ten-question quiz to test your spring produce IQ: http://www.yumsugar.com/Do-You-Know-Spring-Produce-7721587

Also Food+Wine, a respected food and wine magazine and site, has 100+ recipes for your spring produce: http://www.foodandwine.com/articles/spring-produce