Just Greens and more at the farmer’s market

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If you’re looking for radishes at the Tillsonburg Farmer’s Market, Miles Falconer’s Just Greens might be the place to start.

“One or two bunches of radishes,” says a customer Saturday morning.

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Falconer fills a plastic bag with one large bunch and the customer smiles.

“I grow lots of radishes,” said Falconer. “It seems like people want them – they are the best seller. I keep telling my wife that and she’s like, ‘Really? Radishes?’”

At his Just Greens booth on Saturday, Falconer also sold carrots (grown denser so they look like baby carrots), sweet peppers, zucchini, cherry tomatoes, garlic and lettuce.

And a few hot peppers.

“There’s a couple hot peppers there if anybody asks. They don’t usually sell.”

That suits Falconer, who takes them home to make salsa.

“Salsa is one of my favourite things in the world, so I make sure I have all the ingredients – I grow everything for that. I do a little bit of canning and that’s probably the only canning I do. I never make enough, I go through it so fast I always run out midway through the winter.”

Soon after, a customer asks for red hot peppers. She needs two to make a batch of chilli sauce.

“It calls for two red peppers,” she explains.

“They’re not that hot though,” says Falconer, selling her three. “They’re not jalapeno hot, and jalapeno’s aren’t super-super hot.”

Falconer estimates his garden acreage to be “maybe about 1/10^th of an acre.”

“It’s not very big. It’s just a hobby,” says Falconer, who has three garden plots near Delhi. “The biggest one is like 30 by 50.

“I think I started growing about 10 years ago, just for ourselves. I love growing stuff for myself, so I just started selling the extra stuff. And slowly every year it just got bigger and bigger.”

He first sold vegetables at the Tillsonburg Farmers Market in 2018, and also sold some at the Port Rowan Farmers Market. He took a hiatus in 2019.

“I got a feel for what was popular.”

For most gardeners in the area, it was a bit wet growing season.

“I’m on sand, so we don’t hold water. It’s nicer if it’s wet, then dries out,” said Falconer, noting he had some issues with lettuce. “We can take lots and lots of rain but we need at least a day for it to dry off. If it just stays wet and it stays humid, it encourages rot and all kinds of diseases. The worst was the lettuce, and the tomatoes a little bit. Tomatoes are always hard to grow if you don’t have them in a greenhouse. They do not really want water on their leaves.

“I think most farmers prefer it dry… because they can always irrigate and correct that. Still, real rain is always preferable.”

Just Greens has been a weekly regular at the Tillsonburg Farmers Market since July and Falconer plans to keep return with fresh-picked produce until around the end of the month.

The farmers market will remain open until October.

cabbott@postmedia.com