The Healthfirst Farmers Market held its opening day on June 12, 2024, marking the first week of the market which will run every Wednesday through October. Tess Kar, Director of Health and Human Services for the City of Fall River, welcomed attendees, noting the absence of the Mayor but the presence of a representative from Carol Fiola's office, Healthfirst team members, the WIC office, and farmer Laura Smith from Lane Gardens. The day's activity involved planting zucchini seeds, which participants could take home to grow. Laura Smith, the farmer, provided an educational session on zucchinis. She shared that Lane Gardens has been involved with the Healthfirst market since 2018 and also operates markets at St. Ann's Hospital on Tuesdays and Cardinal Medeiros Towers on Fridays. Smith discussed various ways to enjoy zucchini, its botanical classification as a fruit, its distinction as a summer squash, and its nutritional benefits, including being low in calories and a good source of potassium and Vitamin C. She also provided practical advice on planting, growing, and pollinating zucchini plants, noting they can grow up to three feet long and yield about six zucchinis per plant in 50-60 days. Looking ahead, it was announced that Healthfirst will host a zucchini racing event on August 7th, utilizing a ramp donated by the Diamond Regional Votech High School. Attendees were encouraged to visit the book mobile and participate in the planting activity.
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thank you everyone for coming we're really excited that uh this is the first week of the farmers markets um we will be here uh throughout the summer um every Wednesday through October um I'm Tess Kar I'm the director of Health and Human Services for the city of Fall River unfortunately the mayor was unable to be here today but we have a representation from uh representative Carol fiola's office um and some team
0:40members from Health First and the wick um office as well as our farmer uh Laura from Lane Gardens um today we'll be planting zucchinis um and taking them home to watch them grow over the course of the summer we'll be back later in the summer to uh do a zucchini racing um which will um will be utilizing a ramp that has been donated by the diamond Regional votch High School um they've made a ramp
1:09for us to use at the end of the summer so come up feel free to plant a zucchini take um a stroll through the book mobile um and I'm going to pass it over to Laura Smith again from Lane Gardens who's our farmer um to talk a little bit about the market um and the work that she's doing I've been coming to help first for the farmers market since 2018 my partner over here Chelsea has
1:34been such an amazing help here uh I also do two other farmers markets here in Fall River on Tuesdays we are at St an's hospital and on Fridays I'm at Cardinal mad's Towers so today I'm here to talk to you about zucchini so what does everybody else know about zucchini delicious they serve it to at aachi okay anybody else come on grow in the ground grows in the ground true healthy it is
2:12healthy very tasty water base yeah there is a lot of water in it all right thank you all right um anyone have a another favorite way of eating it zucchini bread oh yes a good one so it's nice savory or sweet a zucchini boat yes and we will be making zucchini boats later on in summer this is a zucchini plant by the way uh question is zucchini a fruit or a vegetable I
2:52think we all call it a vegetable we do botanically it's actually a fruit oh my but it's because the fruit that comes off of it is actually an immature ovary I'm sure people help first appreciate that word um zucchini also um is part of a the family of summer squash so there's summer squashes and there are winter squashes so anybody think they know the difference between summer squashes
3:26winter squashes is one distinct thing the color actually it's the skin think about it you you can eat a zucchini squash or a summer squash but eating a butternut squash skin not so fun all right um somebody mentioned it was healthy yes in a in one zucchini it's only 33 calories not bad huh there's also it's a great source of potassium and vitamin C um okay would you like to start planting
4:03yes yes please all right come on so you're planting today in a pot you can keep this plant in your soil in this pot for probably a couple weeks and then you best the idea would be to plant it in the ground or you can put it in a bigger pot when you when it's growing throughout the summer it actually will grow about 3T long it's very viny if you don't have
4:38that kind of space you can trellis it and have it go up all right okay so your the little pumpkin seeds you want to put them like one inch down in your soil one inch down in your soil you you can do more than one if you want I'm doing two I Dro two in now throughout the summer you're going to have to make sure that you're giving this water and fertilizer
5:14and about I'm going to say after 3 weeks you can take it out of that pot and put it into a bigger pot or into the grounds anybody want to guess how long it's going to take to get a
5:38zucchini good guess it is lower than that though planted in the ground 60 about 50 to 60 days you'll actually start to have your zucchini however big one problem might happen and somebody asked me about this about the flowers so the only way you're going to get a zucchini is if the flowers get pollinated so there are two types of flowers on a zucchini there's male and there's female so when the flowers are open
6:13which usually happens in the morning you're going to if you look inside you can see the difference between the male and the female or you can look at um the stem a male flower is got has a very skinny stem and a fale me flower with start to have a little zucchini coming off of it all right um I have two more items has anybody ever heard give a man
6:44a fish he'll eat for a day teach a woman to Garden she's going to give the whole neighborhood zucchini yes I have something along those lines yes how many zucchini how many zucchini you think you're going to get off of one plant two probably six your you don't get a whole lot but I think that phrase came from the fact when people forget to look at for the zucchini cuz they hide underneath the
7:14leaves so make sure you're checking your plant under the leaves and my last tip for the day is to check when you're checking be careful when you're checking under the leaves cuz I'm going to have you I'm going to pass around this zucchini plant I want you to feel the stems here of the leaves they're kind of prickly and that is the prickliness is to prevent insects from eating it and
7:41other animals uh we'll be back here at Health First on August 7th to race our zucchinis down the ramp that the diamond uh botch school has made for us
8:01he oh