One thing that always drives me nuts is that people always say to eat fruit and vegetables "in season" to get the best price, but since grocery stores sell the food all year round and farmer's markets only sell April/May - Oct. it can be hard to know what is in season because of this (besides shopping at farmer's markets).

If you will bare with me I have a little spreadsheet I made to keep track of some fruits (blue) and vegetables (red), as I find more with months I will amend the list. If you have some foods and months for their season I would greatly appreciate it.

I have added the seasonal food info to google docs and you can view as I update it. I have added more fruits and corrected some coloring




(click to enlarge, this is not the most recent one, see above)

UPDATE: Find out food shelf-life and the best way to store it by going to StillTasty.com and selecting your category.

Another good link for seasonal food was recently posted by the UK Guardian - Seasonal Food Chart

Update 2: A printable, simple info graphic to put on your frig. with in-season fruits/veges

Given the development in agriculture, any fruit or vegetable can be produced in any season. However, that doesn’t mean it’s the best thing to eat. The best food to eat is usually what is natural to that particular season - EatTheSeasons




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The interesting thing about tips is that if you have too many, it is overwhelming to remember, too few and you've already probably done it or it isn't useful. But somewhere between 4 and 15 seems to be the perfect amount to find a few you need to implement and remember them.
Wisebread recently posted Five Frugality Hacks Straight Out of the Great Depression and a couple of my favorites are
-Do It Yourself: I need to learn how to do somethings myself and not rely on others to save myself some money.
-Buy From The Source: This would be very handy for meats.

TipHero has 13 Tips for a Cheaper, Better Laundry. I can line dry in my home, but not outside (per apartment complex rules). Another item on the list is to clean out my flexible dryer vent hose; which hasn't been done in 5 years.


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9 Comments

  1. Angela // Tuesday, March 10, 2009 11:01:00 AM  

    Buying fruits and veggies in season is not only more frugal, it is greener. Shipping produce from South America uses a huge amount of carbon. Just check where produce is coming from on the container and try to avoid the ones coming from many thousands of miles away.

  2. Anonymous // Tuesday, March 10, 2009 1:44:00 PM  

    I assume that the red and blue mean they are in season, but what is the difference between red and blue?

  3. Dawn // Tuesday, March 10, 2009 3:06:00 PM  

    @Angela
    Good point, the closer the country is (or state) the better.

    @MJ
    The blue is for fruits, but then I forgot to go back and fix ones I may have missed, so I will be updating shortly.
    Sorry, I goofed so much, I feel like microsoft - rolling out something that wasn't tested.

  4. Anonymous // Tuesday, March 10, 2009 5:04:00 PM  

    This is fantastic! I love going to farmer's markets and picking up the fresh produce, even though it's a bit more expensive. Knowing that the food is fresh and healthy is more than worth it.

  5. Dawn // Tuesday, March 10, 2009 5:07:00 PM  

    @Wojciech Kulicki
    I also enjoy supporting local farmer at the market - it could only get fresher if I grew it myself.

  6. The Mitchells // Tuesday, March 10, 2009 8:00:00 PM  

    This is awesome! I've wanted something like this! I feel the same way - they say eat in season but don't tell you what is in season! Could you import this spreadsheet into gdocs so we can have access to it as you modify it?

    I know you posted it for help - but thank you for helping us!

  7. Dawn // Tuesday, March 10, 2009 9:47:00 PM  

    @The Mitchell's
    Thank you for suggesting that, it will make it easier to upload for others to view.

  8. Bob Montgomery // Thursday, January 07, 2010 2:43:00 PM  

    In the Google Doc rather than repeating the header row you can freeze it at the top, so it will always appear when scrolling.

    Thanks for doing this!

  9. Unknown // Monday, April 12, 2010 3:10:00 PM  

    Love the idea of this, but can't seem to find what region of the world this is based on.
    Is there any way to take into account local growing seasons, for example Australia vs. UK?