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Get Food to Eat, Grow at Area Markets
April 2, 2008
Get Food to Eat, Grow at Area Markets
DENISE MILLER
For the Journal
Editor's note: Between growing seasons, Denise Miller of the New Mexico Farmers' Marketing Association spotlights local growers and their products. Her column appears the first Wednesday of the month.
People get hooked on growers' markets for all kinds of reasons, but one of the most basic is that they offer the freshest food you can get.
That is, unless you grow it yourself.
While the prospect of growing food may seem daunting to those of us with not-so-green thumbs, growers like Lucy and Rob Hays of Corrales will soon be at growers' markets with a variety of edible bedding plants that will already have a good, healthy start in life.
The couple say it's not hard to get 50 pounds of tomatoes from just one good Brandywine plant -- and who isn't tempted to give one their heirloom starters a try with a statement like that?
By the end of this month, the Hayses expect to have starter plants at market. By mid-May, they should have all of their bedding plants ready for sale, including heirloom tomatoes and eggplant, chile, sweet peppers, okra, herbs, a few medicinal plants and flowers.
The plants are popular, said Rob, who ran out of starters by mid-June last season. Yet the Hayses aren't the only growers who sell them. "I'd like to stress that there are several growers at the markets with many more bedding plants than we have and some of them will sell much later into the summer," he said.
So what's the big deal about heirlooms -- are they more difficult to grow than regular hybrid varieties?
Heirloom tomatoes are juicy and succulent, bursting with flavor not often found in hybrids. Their crazy shapes and variegated colors are almost as unusual as their names: Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter and Mrs. Maxwell's Big Italian.
You'll also be glad you grew these beauties because they are hard to find and/or expensive at specialty retailers. They have a thin skin and need to be picked when ripe, which doesn't lend them to mass-market packaging and shipping.
Once you get hooked on the taste of heirlooms you'll also be glad that you can save the seeds and plant them year after year -- something you can't do with a hybrid.
"I'm convinced that plants acclimate and grow stronger and produce better when you save seeds from your best plants," said Rob, who takes care to mark his best-producing plants with a ribbon so he knows which seeds to save.
Heirlooms are no more difficult to grow than other varieties, Rob said. Compost or composted manure is important because tomatoes are heavy nitrogen feeders.
Because curly top virus affects many tomato plants, he also suggests people use row cover (a piece of cloth used for either frost, weather or insect protection) to keep away leafhoppers until the plants are well-established.
How much space do you need to grow heirloom tomatoes? Given half a chance, they will take over because heirlooms are indeterminate, meaning they don't grow to a predetermined size. Rob builds cages out of 6-footsquare, 48-inch-tall fence wire with a diameter of 30 inches, and still many tomato plants outgrow it.
The plants should also be spaced no closer than 5 to 6 feet, he said. They will grow in a very large pot, but will need trellising or caging for support.
Are the Hayses worried that if they successfully sell starter plants they stand to lose their own vegetable customers? Not at all. "There are plenty of people who don't have the time or energy to grow food, and we love to see people get into growing," Lucy said.
The Hayses have sold at markets for four years. Lucy is a parttime graphic designer, and Rob was formerly a telecommunications contractor. Their 17-year-old son, Evan Stambler, is also a big help, they said.
Ready to eat
If you get to market and decide you're not quite ready to try growing your own food, don't worry. The promise of spring also brings many ready-to-eat delights.
By April 27, when the first regular-season Corrales market begins, the Hayses should have wonderful salad mix that includes five lettuce varieties, spinach, arugula, mizuna mustard, Osaka mustard and sometimes a little young chard or kale.
They should also have head lettuce, spinach, arugula, basil, dill, cilantro and eggs. And, if all goes well, they hope to have fresh ripe tomatoes as early as June -- the kind you won't have to water.
Contact Denise at dmiller@ farmersmarketsnm.org. Find a complete list of the 45 markets around the state at farmersmarketsnm.org or call tollfree (888) 983-4400.
WHO: Lucy and Rob Hays, Meadowlark Farm, Corrales
FEATURED CROP: Bedding plants (heirloom tomatoes and more). Tomatoes are high in vitamin C and are a good source of vitamin A. Scientific evidence also points to their potential cancer-fighting properties because of lycopene, a carotenoid found primarily in tomatoes.
SEASON: Spring and early summer
WHERE TO FIND THEM: Corrales Growers' Market and Los Ranchos Growers' Market
