Potential customers can hardly miss the fruit and vegetable bargains that are being trumpeted across the media. However, there is no escaping the message in store from Sainsbury’s on its eight-pack of satsumas at £1.24. Normally, the front of the pack is the most interesting side, but there is no doubt that this fruit is “half price”.

Although I have heard that Tesco is trialling a strategy where customers can leave packaging at the tills, this does not mean that innovations are no longer coming through into the produce aisles. Growing products such as herbs, watercress and even lettuce are not new, but the concept has gone a stage further with an introductory offer on a pack of Dutch-grown Robino cherry tomatoes, which includes growing basil, priced at £2.09 for 250g.

And while looking at salads, Waitrose has come up with an attractive presentation for Moroccan-grown radish in its newly launched Essential range at 69p for 200g. The vegetable is overdue for innovation, as it was a long time ago that the Dutch positioned it as a snack and introduced the plastic cone-shaped bag that gave the product a lift.

Imagination still seems to be running rife when it comes to identifying prepared salads. Marks & Spencer has a new 240g Superbowl Salad for £2.29 on an introductory offer, with the price set to rise by an extra £1 if it becomes a winner. The bowl contains more than the average mix, with spinach, red apples, carrots, lamb’s lettuce, watercress, butternut squash, pomegranates and a variety of seeds included.

Meanwhile, a burst of good weather over the holiday period has meant that the summer berry season is already well underway. Most multiples are still striving for a point of difference, whether through larger punnets or exclusive varieties.

In its Extra Special range, Asda has 400g of Spanish Driscoll Magdalena for £1.98, emblazoned with the slogan “Bigger Pack, Better Value”.

M&S has come up with a Very Berry Blast pack, aimed at the top end of the market at £3.99. The contents of the 240g punnet include not just strawberries (22 per cent), blackberries (14 per cent), raspberries (10 per cent) and blueberries (eight per cent), but also grapes, which make up virtually half the contents.

This is also a time of year when the UK leads on asparagus and Jersey Royal potatoes which, despite all the competition, still occupy a special place on the shelf. That said, I was intrigued with M&S’s two claims that its miniature-sized tubers, at £2.99 for 450g, arrived on the shelf “earlier than everyone else”, and that “more importantly, we are the only retailer to have the potatoes washed, cooled and packed on the island”.

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