Tomatoes that were on the vine Friday morning sat in the back of a truck later that afternoon — red, ripe and ready for purchase. Ears of corn that had grown tall in a neighbor’s backyard and sugar snap peas bursting with freshness also sat in the truck, ready to be eaten.

Locally grown produce, straight from the garden to the consumer, is the idea behind this year’s Farmer’s Market in Tooele at Veterans Memorial Park.

The market made its debut last Friday for the season and will continue into September. This is the fifth year for the Tooele market.

Wayne Lowry, representative of the Tooele Master Gardeners for the Farmer’s Market, said the late frosts have hampered the attempts of farmers to get an early start selling their produce at the market.

“Usually you can plant in Tooele County after May 15. That’s about the date of the historic last frost,” said Lowry, who is now in his third year of selling produce at the market. “This year we had several frosts after that.”

He described trying to set tomatoes plants out four times this year and losing them to frost.

Because of those frosts, Lowry was the first and only vendor at the market last Friday.

Lowry has a greenhouse where he produces sugar snap peas, onions, broccoli and kohlrabi in time for the market’s opening. Kohlrabi is from the cabbage family and resembles a turnip. It can be eaten cooked or raw.

By 6 p.m. all Lowry had left of his 60 pounds of produce was a small basket of sugar snap peas.

“We’ve already eaten our spinach crop,” said Verneal Lowry, Wayne’s wife.

“Spinach is very hearty and cold tolerant,” Wayne said. “I can remember my father sprinkling spinach seeds on snow.”

Lowry’s lifelong love of gardening started when he was very young, helping his father in his garden. Lowry, a Tooele native, recalls having a garden plot at every house he has lived in.

“The first was probably the smallest,” he said. “When we were first married I lived in my grandmother’s house on Main Street, where the 7-Eleven store is now. Our garden plot there was only 50 feet by 40 feet.”

Today, Lowry has more time and more space. He retired three years ago from the Tooele Army Depot as a production controller. He now cultivates two half-acre garden plots — one at his home in Tooele on Birch Street, and the other in a nearby widow’s backyard. As the growing season goes on, he will fill the back of his pickup truck and head to the market around 2:30 p.m. on Fridays to get set up. By dusk, the truck will be empty.

Lowry’s description of his crops leaves mouths watering. His corn crop is a salt and pepper variety with triple sugar.

“It is so sweet you can eat it off the cob without cooking,” he said.

He also will have tomatoes — sweet cherry red, Juliet grape, roma, and celebrity — to sell at the market later this year. His garden also produces cantaloupe, several varieties of squash, Yukon gold potatoes, and six kinds of peppers ranging in heat from habanero to bell peppers.

Although Lowry’s garden is not organic, he uses no chemical pesticides. He does use ammonium sulfate as a nitrogen supplying fertilizer.

“A lot of my customers come back to the market and find me every year because I don’t use pesticides in my garden,” Lowry said.

On the corn crop, he will wait until the silk on the ears just starts turning from green to brown. Then he will carefully spray the silk with spray kitchen oil to prevent worms from getting into the ears.

Lowry was selling his broccoli for $1 per pound at the market, which is comparable to prices at local grocery stores, but the produce from Lowry is picked the same day it is purchased.

Farmer’s markets are a growing phenomenon in the country. According to a study completed two years ago by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, there were 1,755 such markets in the country in 1994. That number grew to more than 4,300 in 2006.

Tooele’s market will grow this year as crops mature and new vendors make their way to the Vine Street park, Lowry said. Local gardeners interested in selling their produce at the market can contact Lowry at 882-0633. There is no fee for vendors.

The Tooele’s Farmer’s Market is held at Veterans Memorial Park on the corner of Vine and Main streets from 4 p.m. until dusk on Fridays.

tgillie@tooeletranscript.com