FARMERS MARKETS
While spring might be nearly over, a lot of farmers markets are just now taking off, and that means more fresh, local produce. On Monday, Richard Jelenek at the Grand Traverse Commons Farmers Market in Traverse City had a lot of baby greens for sale.
“This is arugula and this is mixed greens. It has tatsoi in it, mizuna mustard greens, red giant mustard greens, red cabbage, romaine lettuce. It’s got kohlrabi ... ," he says.
Jelenek and his wife Diana also sell microgreens, including bull’s blood beet, a variety with a vivid scarlet stem topped and a small, bright green leaf. Jelenek says he plants new seeds every week. Each batch of baby greens is cut after about three weeks, while microgreens like the bull's blood beet are harvested in two weeks. This schedule of seeding and cutting means they'll have a steady supply of greens into the fall.
Radishes are available now, too, and will be all summer. As with greens, radish seed is continually planted. At the Glen Arbor Farmers Market, Pat Bardenhagen had two varieties for sale: the spicy, bright red cherry belle and the oblong, pink and white French breakfast radish.
“These ones still have a hint of pepper to them, but they’re pretty mild for radishes right now,” she says.
Annie Lively with the Lively Farm also had greens, radishes and bok choy.
“People aren’t going for the bok choy. I think it’s intimidating, maybe. But it’s good for stir-fries, and probably just ... raw in a potato salad,” she says.
It won’t be long before she has quite a bit more to offer.
“We’ll have dark leafy greens, so kale and chard, and head lettuce as well,” Lively says.
The produce you can find right now depends not only on where you live, but also on how it's being grown. Hoop houses, those plastic-covered tunnel-shaped enclosures, can help jump-start the growing season, and farmers who have them might be ahead of the curve.
Anne Cunningham and her husband, who have a hydroponic farm near Suttons Bay, grow their produce in a greenhouse and are already selling heirloom tomatoes and several varieties of head lettuce including lalique.
“It’s a very popular lettuce. It’s really frilly green leaf lettuce on the top, but it has almost an iceberg crunch. But it has flavor. It’s delicious,” Cunningham says.
One vegetable that won’t be around much longer is asparagus. Dana Boomer with Still Point Farm in Empire still had some on Tuesday.
“Absolutely get it now if you want fresh, local asparagus," she says.
And as for fresh fruit, apart from some great looking apples that have been stored over from last fall, you can find rhubarb, which, while it’s treated as a fruit, is actually a vegetable.
Josiah Bakker with Bakkers Acres says it should be around for a few more weeks, overlapping nicely with the summer fruit everyone has been waiting for.
“Strawberries ... strawberries ... strawberries are the next big thing to be coming in," he says.
You should be able to find them beginning now.
WATCH FOR ...
While summer doesn’t officially begin for a few days — on June 21 — if you look outside at our native plants, you’ll already know summer is coming. For Shelly Stusick, a native plant specialist at the Grand Traverse Conservation District, there’s a particular plant that tells her that summer is just around the corner.
“The first blooms of lanceleaf coreopsis came out. And so I'm really excited about that, because it's a true sign of summer with the yellow blooms. And that's something that continuously blooms throughout the entire summer,” Stusick says.
The hardiness of this native species has been especially striking recently, as lanceleaf is remarkably drought tolerant.
“The coreopsis blooms that we're talking about — you'll find those in natural areas even if we didn't get a month of rain,” she says.
A great way for folks to get to know native plants is to volunteer with the Grand Traverse Conservation District Workbee program in their native garden at the Boardman River Nature Center. The group meets each second and fourth Wednesday of the month from 9 to 11 a.m. until the fall. Sign up online.
Let us know what you’re seeing! Send your photos of northern Michigan flora and fauna to ipr@interlochen.org. Put "Audio Guide to Spring" in the subject line.
Special thanks to Max Howard, who also reported for this episode.
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