Toledo is blooming with spring activities, welcoming back seasonal markets and annual festivals. 

Over at the Toledo Farmers’ Market, 525 Market St., Toledo, Flower Day Weekend sprouts up this weekend. The 34th annual event welcomes greenhouses to share their stock each day, alongside the usual crew of produce and craft vendors on Saturday. 

Hours are 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday, and 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday. 

Dan Madigan, director of the Farmers’ Market Association of Toledo, shared what to expect. 

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“Saturday is our market day where all of our regular vendors along with flower growers are there at the market. We’ve got a number of artisans that come in and supplement our Saturday market,” he said 

On Sunday, he continued, “it’s just strictly flowers.” 

And Monday offers its own unique shopping experience.

“Monday is more like the cleanup day. It allows those that had to work the weekend a chance to come down to the market where we’ll still have food vendors; some produce vendors come back on Monday, and then we’ve got plenty of flowers,” Mr. Madigan said. “Of course, on Monday, the vendors don’t want to take those flowers home, so generally you can find some good deals.”

Mr. Madigan said there will be a wide range of products for sale from around 100 vendors throughout the entire weekend. Visitors can expect to shop from booths offering fruits, vegetables, flowers, coffee roasters, pottery, meats, and more.

“We also have artisan breads such as All Crumbs [Artisan] Bakery, Country Grains [Bread Company],” Mr. Madigan said. “They’re two of our regulars at the market. And then we also have soap makers, candle makers, people that do wood creations.” 

Trish Jeffers, co-owner of Jeffers Greenhouse in Grand Rapids, said her husband’s family business has been at the market for years, even before Flower Day Weekend started.

“My husband’s family has been in it as long as I can remember,” she said. “I know somebody in the family has been going to the farmers’ market since I would have to say the 1920s.”

The family-owned business sells unique planters. Ms. Jeffers said they have 15,000 succulent plants ready to go for the weekend.

“We bring pre-planted planters, we plant antiques. We went down almost to Mexico, down to the border, and brought back some hand-painted pottery. So we always try to plant unusual things,” Ms. Jeffers said. “[I have] baby’s bathtubs that I'm planting, I have like an ice cream churn right now planted in the greenhouse, I have an antique ice cube crusher planted right now, some old tool boxes.”

Lori Diver is also a regular vendor at Flower Day Weekend. As the owner of Homestead Soaps, located in Monroe, Mich., she said her products are more on the artisanal side.

“I have aroma sprays, and one of my soaps is a dog shampoo. And then I have a jewelweed soap as well that is good for poison ivy, insect bites, things like that,” Ms. Diver said. “I have what I call Grandma Dora’s Sunburn Remedy. So my great-grandma used raw apple cider vinegar [for sunburns], and it was amazing because it pulls all the heat out, so I use that in it. And then I use lavender as well because lavender is really good for pain and burns.”

Ms. Diver has been involved in Flower Day Weekend since 2007, and she has also been selling in the farmers’ market for many years. She said the market is a great place to make connections and promote local growers and makers.

“The Toledo Farmers’ Market is amazing and anybody that comes to the Flower Day, I’m wanting to convert them to shop at least once a month at our market. So, I’m hoping the people that come to just Flower Day or say ‘Oh, let’s go do this, let’s go to Flower Day.’ And realize what a gem we have in the farmers’ market itself,” Ms. Diver said. 

In addition to vendors, the market will see a number of food trucks.

“We will have seven or eight different food trucks, serving everything from barbeque ribs to people that do like lemon shake-ups; [we have] someone who does these big pineapple drinks,” Mr. Madigan said. “Also, you’ve got lots of fair-type food and we close off a section of Market Street to create a safe environment for people to wander through the food trucks.”

Now a local tradition, Flower Day Weekend was started to accommodate the greenhouse industry in the region.

“The catalyst was probably the fact that we had a very big greenhouse industry. We wanted to highlight that, highlight all the different growers that maybe people weren’t aware of because they didn’t generally do retail,” Mr. Madigan said. “A lot of those growers are no longer operating just because of the cost of operating greenhouses, but others have just expanded and we’re starting to see a lot of younger farmers, younger growers which is very encouraging.”

Rounding out the offerings at Flower Day Weekend, Mr. Madigan said they also have some home improvement vendors who set up alongside the rest of the market.

“They generally are on hand because of how much traffic we generate for this event. We expect, as in the past, anywhere from 10,000 to 15,000 on Saturday and on Sunday, and then about half that amount on Monday,” he said.

As the busy weekend steadily approaches, local and regional vendors like Ms. Jeffers are gearing up for what is often the best weekend of sales for the year.

“It’s probably almost half of our sales, sometimes, for the year,” Ms. Jeffers said.

First Published May 25, 2023, 12:00 p.m.