Title: Fresh Starts
Location: At the Market
Time: 8:00 – Noon
Date: April 17, 2010
Description: The time get your garden going is now!

And the Eno River Farmers Market in historic downtown Hillsborough is ready to provide you with all the seedlings, soil amendments, and information that you need to make your garden, beautiful, healthy, productive and environmentally responsible.

On April 17 from 8am to Noon, the market, held at the Public Market House on East Margaret Lane, will celebrate Fresh Starts, featuring seedlings and transplants of vegetables, herbs, and flowers, as well as lots of information about gardening, soil health, and sustainable growing.

Vendors will offer sustainably grown vegetable transplants including tomatoes like Thai Pink, Brandywine, and Roma, peppers, broccoli as well as peppers, cabbage, broccoli, squash, zucchini, fennel and a whole variety of herbs. Vendors will also have potted herbs and flowers.

Vendors will feature heirloom varieties that they choose for their own farms and that are well suited to the central North Carolina climate and soil. Many of these varieties are difficult to find in local gardening stores or big box retailers.

Twin Spruce Farm will have worm castings, compost teas, and compost available for purchase, as well as an example of a vermiculture bin and plenty of information about how to get your own compost pile or vermiculture bin started at home.

A group of faculty and students from the Sustainable Agriculture Program at Central Carolina Community College in Pittsboro will be on hand to offer information about organic gardening, to talk about soil health and organic soil additives, and to answer any questions you might have about sustainable growing.

Eno River vendors stress the importance of buying seedlings from local producers instead of big chain stores. Local seedlings tend to be healthier and less likely to develop disease.

Debbie Donald of Two Chicks Farms explains, “The transplants I am growing for selling at market are grown using the same seed suppliers and methods as the ones we will be using on our farm. Plants that are not watered properly, which sometimes happens at large retailers, can become stressed which can cause future problems.”

Last year there was a major tomato blight that affected tomato plants up and down the East Coast. That blight was traced back to one commercial greenhouse whose plants were sold at big-box garden stores.

According to plant pathology professor William Fry from Cornell University, quoted in the New York Times, “The outbreak spread in part from the hundreds of thousands of tomato plants bought by home gardeners at Wal-Mart, Lowe’s, Home Depot and Kmart stores starting in April.”

“Using locally grown transplants can prevent diseases brought in from large scale growing operations,” says Donald.

Many Eno River Farmers Market Vendors use sustainable growing methods, and do not treat their seedlings with synthetic fertilizers or pesticides. Two vendors will be offering certified organic seedlings.

Whitted Bowers Farm, a certified organic and biodynamic farm specializing in heirloom varieties will offer tomato varieties including Brandywine, Black Krim, Gold Medal, Snow White Cherry, Black Cherry, Jaune Flamme, and sweet and hot peppers including Cayenne, Pardon, and Purple Beauty.

Rob Bowers explains that the Eno River Market offers unparalleled quality and variety, “This level of quality is unavailable anywhere except at ERFM.”

Lisa Pope of Hurtgen Meadows Farm emphasizes the importance of buying local and supporting local farms both for the health of the local economy and for the health of your garden.

“Supporting the local economy, and especially small family farms, is very important to the sustainability of Hillsborough. There is something to be said for knowing exactly where and who your food and plants come from. Plus, we have lots of varieties of plants that are not available at the large commercial garden stores. The varieties we select to grow from seed have proven to grow successfully in this area.”

“Fresh Starts” runs from 8 am to Noon on Saturday, April 17 at the Eno River Farmers Market on E. Margaret Lane in downtown Hillsborough.