Arrive in the first hour if you want the best selection, and in the last half hour if you want the best chance at a discount. Bring your own bags and some small bills. Then ask one question at every stand you stop at: what is best this week? That is most of what you need, and the rest of this post explains why.
## Check the day and the date before you leave
This is the step first timers skip. Many DFW markets are not weekly. Some run the first and third Saturday, some the second and fourth, some a single Saturday a month, and a few open only a handful of dates a year. Others are seasonal and close for the winter, or shift to evening hours in July and August.
Look at the market's page in the directory for its day, hours and cadence, then check the market's own site or social feed the morning you go. Weather closures and season end dates change there first.
## When to arrive
**For selection, go early.** A lot of DFW markets run 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM, which means the market has a beginning, a middle and an end inside four hours. Whatever a grower brought in small quantity, the first eggs, the good tomatoes, the one flat of berries, is gone well before closing.
**For deals, go late.** Vendors who drove in with a truckload would generally rather sell the last of it than haul it home. The last thirty minutes is where that math favors you. You are shopping what is left, not what you planned.
Pick one. Trying to do both in one trip is how you end up arriving mid-morning with the worst of both.
## What to bring
**Your own bags.** Bring more than you think, and bring at least one you do not mind getting dirty. Root vegetables come with dirt on them, which is a feature.
**Small bills.** Card readers depend on the individual vendor and on cell signal at an outdoor site, and neither is something you can count on before you get there. Small bills work at every stand, and they make change easy for a vendor working a line.
**A cooler in the car**, if you are buying eggs, meat, dairy or anything you are not driving straight home with. North Texas heat is not gentle to a bag of greens sitting in a parking lot.
**A rough plan, loosely held.** See below.
## How a market differs from a grocery aisle
A grocery aisle is built for a fixed list. It carries the same items every week, sourced to be available regardless of the season, and the person stocking the shelf cannot tell you anything about the item.
A market inverts all three. What is there changes month to month. The person selling it often grew it. And the selection is finite, so the list you wrote at home is a worse guide than the tables in front of you.
The practical consequence is to shop the season instead of the recipe. Walk the whole market once before buying anything, see what is stacked highest and what looks best, then decide what you are cooking. Our seasonal guide tells you what to expect in a given month, so you can arrive with a realistic idea rather than a fixed one.
## Ask the grower
This is the part that separates a good market trip from an expensive one, and it costs nothing.
Ask what is best this week. Ask what came in yesterday versus what has been on the table since the last market date. Ask how they would cook something you do not recognize. Ask when a crop you are waiting on will actually start, because the grower knows the answer for their farm, which a calendar does not.
You will get straight answers more often than you expect. A vendor who sees you every other Saturday has a strong reason to point you at the good stuff rather than move the tired stuff.
## A reasonable first trip
Pick a market that is open weekly so you are not fighting the calendar on your first visit. Arrive within the first hour. Walk the full market once with your hands empty. Buy from three or four stands rather than loading up at the first one. Ask each of them one question. Go home and cook the thing that looked best, not the thing you planned on Thursday.
Do that twice and you will know which vendors you want to find again, which is the entire point.
Browse markets by city and day in the full directory.