There's a moment, somewhere around mid-June, when the boxes change completely. The root vegetables give way, the greens get lighter and faster to cook, and things start arriving in the box that taste nothing like their supermarket counterparts. Tomatoes that actually smell like tomatoes. Strawberries with flavour in them. Courgettes so fresh they're almost sweet.
Summer is when British growing is at its most spectacular. And it's when a weekly veg box really earns its place in your kitchen.
What comes in a summer box
The contents change week by week depending on what's at its peak, but across the summer months you'll typically see: heritage tomatoes in a range of colours and shapes; courgettes and summer squash, best sliced thin and thrown on a griddle; broad beans and peas that need nothing more than a few minutes in boiling water and a knob of butter; new potatoes with skins so thin they barely need peeling; fresh salad leaves — rocket, little gems, watercress — that wilt within days of picking and are extraordinary when they haven't; British strawberries, raspberries, and the occasional gooseberry or redcurrant that you'd never find in a supermarket; and herbs — basil, coriander, dill — grown properly rather than in a plastic pot on a warehouse shelf.
Beyond the familiar, summer is also when the interesting things arrive. A bundle of rainbow chard. The first fresh sweetcorn of the year. A basket of heritage cucumber. These are the ingredients that make weekly customers of people who signed up for a free trial.
Why summer produce tastes so different
It's not complicated. A tomato grown for a supermarket shelf is bred for uniformity and longevity — it needs to survive weeks of refrigerated transport and still look presentable under fluorescent lighting. A tomato grown for flavour and picked at the right moment is an entirely different object.
The gap is most obvious in summer, when British fields are producing at full tilt and the best of what's growing can be on your doorstep within a day or two of being picked. At that point you don't need a recipe — you need good olive oil, a little salt, and a few minutes of restraint.
The rhythm of the season
One of the things people notice about eating seasonally is how quickly you start to feel the calendar through food rather than just the weather. You know it's properly summer when the first British asparagus gives way to broad beans. You know August has arrived when the sweetcorn appears. You start to look forward to things with the kind of anticipation that no amount of year-round availability can replicate.
It sounds like a small thing. It doesn't feel like one.
The farms behind your summer box
From late spring through early autumn, the majority of what we pack comes from farms within 100 miles of London — growers in Kent, Surrey, Sussex, and Essex who've been working with us long enough that we know exactly what they're best at and when. During these months, the 36-hour farm-to-door turnaround is at its most reliable, and the quality shows.
We do occasionally supplement with the best of what Europe has to offer — a particularly good batch of peaches from a trusted grower in France, or Spanish melons when British ones aren't ready yet. We'll always tell you when we do, and we'll always tell you why.
Making the most of it
The best summer cooking is the simplest. A plate of sliced heritage tomatoes with good oil and flaky salt. Broad beans on toast. New potatoes with mint and butter. Grilled courgette with lemon. These aren't recipes so much as reminders that the best ingredient is the one that was grown properly and didn't travel too far to reach you.
If you're not sure what to do with something in your box, our Artichoke Intelligence tool can build you a recipe around exactly what's arrived that week — no waste, no guesswork.
The box is waiting
Summer doesn't last long enough. The window for the best British strawberries is a few weeks. First-of-season sweetcorn comes and goes before most people notice. A weekly box makes sure you don't miss it.
