Celebrate the start of summer vacation at the Broadway Community Market this evening, 5-8 p.m.! At this “School’s Out” Special Evening Market, you can purchase tacos to enjoy for supper at the picnic tables and shop local vendors, for a festive weeknight version of our Saturday market. Here’s what I’ll have for you:

• Garlic scapes
• Sugar snap peas
• Radishes
• Head lettuce
• Kale
• Garlic salt
• Aloe plants
• Crocheted items

If you purchase one of each vegetable, you’ll have all the veggies you need to make a stir-fry or pasta primavera (literally “spring pasta”) with a side salad. Simple, nourishing, and delicious! You can expect all of the same items at this week’s Saturday morning market as well.

I’ve been harvesting an abundance of lettuce this year, and some of you may have wondered, Why head lettuce? Why not sell convenient bags of mixed greens? There are two main reasons for this choice. First, head lettuce does not require packaging. Whereas mixed greens are best sold in single-use plastic bags that end up in the landfill or clamshells that may or may not be reused or recycled, I can set head lettuce on my market table as-is for a pretty, waste-free display.

The second reason is that head lettuce does not require washing on my end. It does get a quick dunk in a basin of cold water to remove any bugs and cool it down quickly, but I don’t have the setup to properly and safely wash and spin-dry mixed greens.

Plus, both the lack of washing and the heads remaining intact mean that the lettuce will keep longer. You may have noticed that mixed greens will start to wilt within a couple days, and there always seem to be icky slimy bits. That doesn’t happen with head lettuce. Just make sure to transfer your lettuce to a sealed container or plastic grocery bag and put it in the fridge as soon as you get home from the market, and it will last a week or longer (if you don’t eat it sooner!).

See you at the market!

The garlic plants have put on little wispy elf hats. Each of these whimsical additions curls downward on a long, thin stem emerging from the center of the leaf stalk, a sure sign that the garlic will be ready to harvest in a few weeks.

In truth, these are garlic scapes, the flowering stalks that appear on hardneck garlic, such as the Chesnok Red variety I am trying this year. Pulling the scapes – a firm, steady tug detaches them from the rest of the plant with a satisfying pop! – encourages the plants to put more energy into bulb production rather than the flowers. And then we get to eat these springtime delicacies.

Much like a garlicky green onion, garlic scapes can be added to salad, stir-fry, quiche, soup, or even garlic scape pesto. Really, anywhere that you would use garlic or green onions, you can use garlic scapes. Just give them a rinse, trim off the bud end (or “elf hat”), and chop up the rest of the stem, or thinly slice them to use raw.

If you’d like to give them a try, I’ll have bundles of garlic scapes for sale at the Broadway Community Market this Saturday, 8am-noon! I’ve also been picking lots of sugar snap peas this week, and I still have plenty of sweet, crisp head lettuce and tender kale. Of course, you will also find garlic salt, aloe plants, and crocheted items on my table.

Keep an eye on the Broadway Community Market Facebook page for details about an upcoming giveaway opportunity! Each purchase made at the market during the month of June will enter you to win some fantastic prizes from Fairydiddle Farm and other vendors.

See you at the market!

The past couple weeks have seen a flurry of planting. Each morning I head outside, garden knife in hand, and dig little holes, tuck in little plants. They look sad in their tiny plastic cells, but somehow once they find themselves in the garden, they suddenly appear stronger, greener. And yet still so frail; just a few too many slug nibbles can devastate a plant.

Planting is an exercise in faith. I put a tiny green plant in the ground, or a miniscule seed, and trust that it will grow. I water, weed, prune, trellis, and watch for new shoots of growth, wait for flowers, hope for an abundance of fruit.

I am almost done with summer planting – just the paste tomatoes and second patch of beans to go. In the past two weeks, I’ve transplanted and sown cherry and slicing tomatoes, sweet and hot peppers, cucumbers and cucamelons, zucchini and yellow squash, beans, basil, winter squash, and sweet potatoes. Mornings are the best part of my day. Sweaty, dirty, and full of purpose and hope.

Speaking of mornings, you can help make my Saturday mornings awesome too! Come out to the Broadway Community Market this Saturday between 8am and noon to help support this little farm as well as the many other local business set up there. I hear we’ve got a new vendor this week with specialty sandwiches and lattes!

At my booth you’ll find lots of leafy greens (kale and head lettuce!), radishes, possibly the first of the sugar snap peas, garlic salt, aloe plants, and 100% cotton crocheted items.

See you at the market!