Kerala season calendar: fruits and vegetables by month

Pick a month to see which Kerala fruits and vegetables are in their main season. Year-round staples are listed too, with the months when demand peaks.

The year at a glance

How to read this calendar

Kerala has two monsoons and no real winter, so a great deal of produce is available all year. The months here are the main season, when a crop is most plentiful at markets across the state. Exact timing moves with rainfall, altitude and district: mangoes ripen earlier in the dry north than in the wet south, and hill produce from Idukki and Wayanad follows its own timetable.

Festivals shape demand as much as harvests do. Before Onam in August or September, markets fill with nendran bananas, pumpkins, ash gourds, long beans and yams for the feast, and many families plant vegetables in June to harvest in time. Before Vishu in April, golden cucumbers (kani vellari) and seasonal fruit are bought for the kani, the arrangement seen first thing on Vishu morning.

Fish and the monsoon

Fish follow seasons too. Kerala enforces a ban on mechanised trawling along its coast for several weeks during the south-west monsoon, usually from early June to the end of July, to protect spawning stocks. Traditional and country craft keep fishing, so sardines and mackerel still reach markets, but deep-sea varieties can be scarce. The exact dates are announced each year by the state fisheries department. Before you buy, read our guide to choosing fresh fish, and use the fish names list to know what you are looking at.

References

• Kerala Agricultural University
• Department of Agriculture Development and Farmers Welfare, Kerala
• ICAR-Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, Kochi

Frequently asked questions