SAN JUAN - Customers planning to buy organic vegetables at the April farmers market in San Juan this weekend can expect the chemically free produce to be as fresh as possible, organizers say.

"Everything will have been harvested only hours before it goes on sale," said Barbara Storz, a Texas AgriLife Extension Service horticulture agent in Hidalgo County.

The sale is slated for Saturday at North San Juan Park from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., at 511 E. Earling Road (the Nolana extension), between Raul Longoria and Cesar Chavez roads.

"Store-bought vegetables, which are rarely organic, can be up to two weeks old and have lost a lot of their nutritional benefits. But the products we'll be selling at the farmers market will be only hours old," Storz said.

She organized Grow'n Growers, an Extension program that teaches low-income citizens in the San Juan area to grow vegetables without using chemicals and then sell them at the area's only organic farmers market.

Fifteen families joined the program last year and organized a farmers' cooperative known as Familias Productores del Valle, or Family Producers of the Valley.

The first farmers market, also in San Juan, was a huge success for the newly formed co-op; all their vegetables were sold before the 1 p.m. closing time.

"We've been looking at the red leaf cabbages we'll be selling and they are huge, nothing short of beautiful," Storz said.

Other products on sale include beets, radish, lettuce, Swiss chard, three kinds of squash, tomatoes, herbs, celery and onions.

"The herbs include rosemary, basil, dill and borage, which is used in cooking for flavoring, but it also used for medical purposes," Storz said. "We'll also be selling 1-ounce packets of organic seeds so gardeners can grow their own dill or red leaf cabbage."

For more information, contact Storz at (956) 383-1026.

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Rod Santa Ana III is a communications specialist at the Texas A&M Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Weslaco.