Bay Meadows

The farmers’ tables are filling up with spring greens like lettuce, green onions, kale, broccoli, spinach, and more! You’ll also find delicious gourmet foods, flowers, cheeses, olive oil, and so much more, says Doug Mena, Market Manager

This month keep an eye out for garlic, both spring and green variations.

Break out your favorite Fieldwork Brewing San Mateo beer, some sharp Irish Cheddar from Whole Foods Market and use those fresh green garlic stalks from the College of San Mateo Farmers Market to create something special. Just in time for Saint Patrick’s Day you can make this Cheesy Herbed Beer Bread with fresh garlic from the market.

Did you know?

According to CSMFM, there are two main types of garlic: hardneck and softneck. The hardneck type, also called topset garlic, produce fewer but larger cloves, while the softneck types produce smaller, but more numerous cloves. Most of the garlic available at your farmers’ market is of the softneck type which offers more cloves per bulb. It also grows better in the mild California winters. Individual cloves are planted directly in the ground in spring and fall to produce more garlic bulbs.

Garlic grows much like an onion, a single bulb per plant that grows below ground and narrow leaves that grow upward. Garlic bulbs consist of individual cloves a papery skin holding the bulb together and protecting the cloves. Individual cloves also have a papery covering for protection.

Green, or spring, garlic is simply immature garlic. It looks like slightly overgrown scallions or green onions and has a bulb that is usually white with a slight pink tint. It is pulled before the garlic cloves can form. Pulled by growers when thinning crops it has increasingly grown as a crop in its own right, usually harvested in late March to early April. It has a mild flavor and can be used in place of scallions.

Open Saturdays from 9am to 1pm, located at the College of San Mateo in the Galileo parking lot, it’s a quick jaunt from Bay Meadows and you’ll find ample parking available in the adjacent lots.

Conveniently located between San Francisco and Palo Alto in San Mateo, Bay Meadows offers housing within walking distance of Caltrain. Ease of transportation is only one reason you’ll fall in love with Bay Meadows. Smartly-designed, high-quality new homes and apartments sit among 18 acres of open space, which includes parks, a community garden, public art, ball fields, bocce and basketball courts and a new playground. All this just a walk from Whole Foods, Blue Bottle Coffee, Slices San Mateo, ROAM Artisan Burgers, Fieldwork Brewing Co., Tin Pot Creamery, Hillsdale Shopping Center and more. Learn more about what Midurban life offers by following our Facebook page.