Katie Herring is sales and marketing manager at Cultivate

IT'S the season for UK plums but you’d be forgiven for forgetting when plum season is as they are readily available year round in the supermarkets.

As usual with imported fruit and veg, these will generally turn out to be a disappointment when it come to flavour.

Picked before they are ripe to aid their transportation across the globe, they'll never compare to the home-grown, in-season plums we get at this time of year.

At Cultivate we've been getting plums from North Aston Organics, who harvest them fresh from the trees each week.

Not only does this mean they are truly ‘ready-to-eat’ but their flavour is divine.

The variety we've been stocking is the Victoria: named after Queen Victoria it was first discovered in a garden in Alderton, Sussex.

Although this variety is popular here in the UK there are hundreds of others to choose from including damsons and greengages.

Their skin colour ranges from dark purple to red, green and yellow and all have a fragrant and juicy flesh.

You also have the choice between dessert and culinary plums.

Dessert plums tend to have a higher sugar content so can be enjoyed without cooking whereas culinary plums are not just sharper but respond much better to heating and cooking.

The Victoria is actually a dual-purpose plum and so is much more versatile, which is why, when I ask our customers what they plan to do with their plum purchase, I get many different mouth-watering recipes suggestions including compotes, rice puddings, cheesecakes, preserves and tarts.

These delicious stoned fruits pair well with savoury dishes too.

I'm looking forward to trying them grilled, stuffed with soft goat's cheese and sprinkled with chopped sage, a recipe I recently discovered online.

The local season may not last too long so it's best to stock up while you can and, as they freeze well, you can make them last well into the winter months.

Personally I think my preferred preservation method is creating a scrummy plum gin by steeping plums and sugar in your gin of choice.

It should take about three months for the gin to be ready which means I can still be raising a glass to our local plums come Christmas. Cheers!