River Cottage: Spring Season 1: Episode Guide & Ratings

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall cooks using produce from Britain's abundant spring harvest, including asparagus, artichokes and lamb. The chef's mother's shepherd's pie recipe is taste-tested against Delia Smith's cheat version with surprising results, and five Bristol families are challenged to turn an acre of city land into an urban smallholding. Plus, an update on the Chicken Out campaign

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall prepares dishes using seasonal lettuce and spinach from his kitchen garden and dandelion and burdock grown in the hedgerows. The experimental Bristol smallholding receives four saddleback pigs, and vegetarian Susan accepts the task of butchering a whole lamb's carcass. Plus, the chef's country honey is pitted against the city variety at a taste-off in Broadway market

The potatoes and radishes are ready for picking and the broad beans are de-podded for a luxurious dish of beans on toast. Vegan Jess chooses a batch of hens from a battery egg farm as the Bristol experiment to turn an acre of derelict city land into a smallholding continues. Back at River Cottage, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall organises a foraging competition and finds his ducklings hatch days early.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall celebrates the arrival of summer with a fair. He prepares elderflower champagne and the Bristol families spit-roast pigs, lamb and goat. The final crops he still has to harvest are peas, gooseberries and wet garlic, at which time he will have experienced all that his land has to offer during his favourite season of the year.