It’s National Farmer’s Market Week! What better way to celebrate than with a trip to the Garden’s weekly Greenmarket to chat with some of the great community volunteers, politicians, and health advocates who turn up every Wednesday to dispense advice to the market’s shoppers?
The New York Botanical Garden Greenmarket occurs every Wednesday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. The market will run until Thanksgiving.
NYBG staffers and a group of visitors get into the spirit of this month’s Dig! Plant! Grow! theme in the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden, Pickle Me! Want your own pickles? Come visit the Family Garden daily after 1:30 p.m. and get in on the briney action.
Pickle Party (photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen)
Last month’s theme was Sweet and Stinky. Didn’t make it to the Garden to sample the recipes full of alliums? Never fear! Here are the delicious recipes. We’ll post the pickle-tastic recipes here soon!
It’s a beautiful day to buy seasonal, farm-fresh produce from our fantastic vendors at the Botanical Garden Greenmarket. The Greenmarket is open today until 3 p.m. Come by to pick up eggplants, cantaloupe, peaches, cherries, and blackberries and visit Spanish Paradise: Gardens of the Alhambra before it closes on August 21!
Gajeski Produce has bunches of sunflowers to decorate your dinner table, corn, zucchini, cucumbers, squash, and field grown tomatoes in all colors. Greens also abound– lettuce, broccoli, and scallions along with fresh herbs basil and cilantro. Don’t forget to pick up some eggs they brought fresh from Feather Ridge Farm.
Migliorelli Farm has carrots, beets, radishes, fennel, and turnips–good kitchen standards to stock up on. More interesting greens like dandelion, collards, escarole, fennel, kale, chard, mustard, and bok choy are available, too. Apples and corn are beginning to become a regular presence.
Local honey can be purchased from The Little Bake Shop. Pies of all sorts-cherry, blueberry, apple, and raspberry in the Linzer tart and other sweets are perfect for sharing.
Bread Alone has sourdough, multigrain, and foccacia breads ready for sandwich fillings. Raisin nut, ciabatta, and peasant rolls are a compliment to any meal. Muffins, tarts, danishes, cookies, and scones make for nice treats.
Red Jacket Orchard has delicious sweet red cherries, small apricots, sugar plums, apples, jams, and ice cold refreshing juices.
You can learn more about Greenmarket, part of the Council on the Environment of New York City–one of the largest open-air farmers market programs in the United States–at their booth. Taste what’s fresh at the weekly cooking demonstrations–this week features blackberry-basil syrup.
The Floral Flyer ran on weekends and holidays at The New York Botanical Garden from May 1949 until the early 1970s, when it was taken out of service. The Flyer is a precursor to the Tram available to today’s Garden visitors. Current tram operation began in the early 1990s and it is available daily.
“OPERATION of a three-car tractor train around the grounds of the New York Botanical Garden is scheduled to begin in May, provided the roadway now nearing completion over the new bridge across the Bronx River is ready for use by that time. The train, which is similar to those borrowed from the Zoo for tours of the grounds during Garden Week in May 1945, is the gift of Mrs. Harold Irving Pratt, who played a prominent part in the plans for the Botanical Garden’s 50th Anniversary celebration at that time. It is to be named the Floral Flyer.
“Each of the three cars will hold 16 passengers. While the train’s schedule and route have not yet been determined, it is expected that it will go to the Conservatory, along the road through the woods to the new bridge in the vicinity of the Rose Garden, north from the Rose Garden along the gorge of the Bronx River, skirting the Hemlock Forest, the collections of deciduous trees, and the magnolias, then turning westward over the boulder bridge and south to the Museum building.”
Mrs. Pratt herself christened The Floral Flyer on May 26 using a watering can filled with daylilies “as emblematic of the New York Botanical Garden’s scientific and horticultural accomplishments.”
The Flyer made more than one thousand round-trips over the Memorial Day weekend, in 1949. The fare that first summer for non-members was twenty cents for a twenty-minute, gas-powered ride. The cost of a modern day tram ride is included in the price of All-Garden Pass or Membership.
The kids in the Garden’s Summer Children’s Gardening Program in the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden learn a plethora of lessons about gardening, food, health, and teamwork. Go kids!
Thomas C. Andres is an Honorary Research Associate at the Garden.
Humans weren’t the only ones suffering during last week’s record-breaking heatwave. The Garden’s plants and animals were also feeling the heat. And while the plants relied upon human-intervention to maintain their cool, the Garden’s feathered and fluffy residents were able to take matters into their own hands, paws, and wings.
Coping Mechanism One: Cool Off the Belly On a Mossy Tree Trunk
Eastern Gray Squirrel
Coping Mechanism Two: Sip a Mimosa
Tiger Swallowtail feeding on the nectar of a Mimosa tree, Albizia julibrissin
