Take the actual farming and planting seeds off of your list because this little excursion leaves the hard work to someone else. Rise and shine with the friendly Saturday morning crowd at the Brookings Farmers Market. Stock up on your favorite vegetables, fresh breads and cinnamon rolls, and visit with the locals while you sip a coffee. Then buzz over to Medary Acres Greenhouse and wander through the many aisles of healthy plants ready to go home with you. Last stop, with any room that is left in your car, fill up on whatever U-pick fruit is in season at Sanderson Gardens.
Brookings Farmers Market
Rise and shine with the friendly Saturday morning crowd at the Brookings Farmers Market. Stock up on your favorite vegetables, cookies, spices, fresh breads and cinnamon rolls, and visit with the locals while you sip a coffee.
Brookings Farmers Market is open Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. but get here early because popular vendors sell out. There are a few fun areas for the kids to play. The season is May through October and there are different food vendors and hand-made products to explore each week.
The market is dog-friendly. Playing with people-friendly dogs might be my favorite part of the morning. Located on the 300 block of 6th Ave, the street between the Brookings Library and County Courthouse. Just southeast of the Children’s Museum of South Dakota.
Medary Acres Greenhouse
If you’re in Brookings between mid-April and mid-June, Medary Acres Greenhouses is open for business and ready for you to browse or fill your car up with plants.
Open in the same location as a family-run business since 1952, my experience has been that you’d be hard pressed to find staff as friendly and knowledgeable anywhere else.
What will you find here? Thousands of plants, hanging baskets, fruits and vegetables, shrubs, roses, herbs, grasses, containers already planted for you, succulents, tropicals, water garden plants, onion and potato sets, the list goes on.
The staff starts working in February and March, to plant most of what’s growing here by seed in the planting room on the northeast side of the greenhouse. It’s warm and humid inside when it’s a blizzard outside. That’s why everything is so lush and healthy for you in the spring when you’re ready to plant.
So let them do the hard work for you. All you need to do is grab a cart.
Sanderson Gardens
This is the big stop of the day. It’s time to load up on whatever fresh fruit and/or vegetables are in season. Today is your stock-the-freezer day. I prep strawberries, rhubarb and raspberries for smoothies and baking and stick them in the freezer. I try to get enough to last me until the next year of U-pick.
Pick your own asparagus, rhubarb and strawberries in the spring and early summer. Later in the summer, come back and pick raspberries. When the pumpkins and gourds are ready, the patch is perfect for kids and fall photos. Follow the signs in the yard to the U-pick that’s in season.
Sometimes they have extra containers available but I strongly suggest you bring your own containers. Ice cream pails work well for picking and I’ve also saved small flat boxes from Costco that are handy. Your hands will get sticky so bring hand wipes or gloves.
Weigh your berries on the scale up in the front yard. Pay with cash. Leave the money in the ammo box.
If you visited Sanderson Gardens when you were a kid, chances are that Jan Sanderson was buzzing around the place back then. Now, 47 years later, he’s still the farmer behind all these gardens. If you see him while you’re out picking, he’ll encourage you to eat as many as you want while you’re at it.
