The green markets, scattered and diverse, call to us in different ways. They summon with the scent of apple cider doughnuts, with the sounds of live music riding the breeze, with the saturated colors of South Florida’s harvest, with the promise of fresh finds.

This year, the first call comes early. West Palm’s popular waterfront market opens Saturday, two weeks earlier than usual. It opens an hour later (and stays open an hour later), and it ushers in a full year of green market Saturdays.

“We’ve had so many people requesting for years that we have an annual market,” says Katrina Resch, who enters her second season as GreenMarket manager. West Palm took a stab at a Wednesday night market this summer, but “it wasn’t as successful as we had hoped.”

Sprawled along the great lawn of the waterfront commons in downtown West Palm, the Saturday market is resplendent, a hub of street foods and farmers that draws professional chefs, home cooks, gardeners and a happy shuffle of leashed pups. In all, some 5,000 market-goers stream through each week, says Resch.

This Saturday’s launch carries a fall theme, with scarecrows on stilts, a pumpkin patch and hay barrels for family photo ops. There will be pumpkin carving and a bounce house for the kids.

The new year-round market opens with 94 vendors, 33 of them new to the market, says Resch.

“This year we’ve added two new vendor categories, for all-natural products and all-natural home décor,” she says. The idea, she says, is to offer décor products that complement other market items – a natural vase for fresh flowers, an earthy bowl for fresh fruit, dishes for baked goods, for example. “We’ll have handmade soaps, oils and wellness type products as well.”

Also opening as a year-round market: the well-attended Palm Beach Gardens GreenMarket launches on Oct. 14. With more than 80 vendors, the Sunday market draws some 2,500 patrons to its stalls, filled mostly by vendors of prepared foods and fresh produce and neatly arranged on the grounds behind City Hall.

Extending the market year-round may please GreenMarket loyalists, but it doesn’t necessarily reflect local harvest schedules. So, off season, market-goers are likely to find less fresh produce at the waterfront. Even this season, the full range of locally grown greens and vegetables does not show up at area markets till deeper into the growing season.

This is why markets such as those in Lake Worth and Wellington begin their seasons later. Those markets reflect the harvest patterns of local growers, notes the organizer of both markets, says Peter Robinson, a food and design consultant who launched the West Palm market in 1995 and ran it for 10 years. The Lake Worth Farmers Market opens Nov. 3; the Wellington Green Market opens Nov. 10.

“In Lake Worth, we have local growers, and we have local wildflowers, and we have local organic tomatoes. We have smaller, more independent vendors,” says Robinson.

His Wellington market enters its second season this year with 60-plus vendors, an expanded version of its inaugural season. “Wellington is more family oriented, baby carriages, dog in tow. We get the equestrians early in the morning with their riding outfits and Australian shepherd herding dogs,” he says.

Robinson, who travels the world to visit the green markets of far-flung cities, takes inspiration from the trips he takes several times a year.

“I love the European street feel of the markets there. When I’m in Paris I cook, so I go for the local strawberries and the local asparagus and all the goat cheeses. In Indonesia, it’s a raw, natural experience: You’re eating non-hybrid food. Nothing is over-sized. Everything has a great smell to it. In New Zealand, they have great meats,” says Robinson, who just returned from a Mennonite market in Waterloo, Canada, where he loaded up on maple syrup.

This week, he’s scheduled to visit the markets of Palo Alto, California. “My passion is the market. I’m always on the lookout for ideas I can bring home.”