Published on August 30, 2024
September is Urban Agriculture Month, and there’s no better place to celebrate than Evergreen Brick Works!
This month, we’re highlighting some of our Saturday Farmers Market and Evergreen Garden Market vendors who grow their produce in Toronto and the GTA. From cultivating culturally significant crops to creating vibrant green spaces for community connection, let’s get to know some of the farmers making a difference in our city. We asked our urban farmers about their space, the benefits of urban agriculture, what inspired them to get started and what types of crops are best suited to this type of farming.
Tell us a bit about your farm.
“Xa Lát Farm is located in Etobicoke and aims to enrich Toronto’s urban agriculture scene with Southeast Asian culture, play, and ecological sustainability through small-scale agriculture. We focus on growing a mix of flowers and Southeast Asian vegetables, using ecological and regenerative practices. The name “Xa Lát” (pronounced “sa-luht”) means salad in Vietnamese, acting as a symbol of our commitment to fresh, culturally significant produce.
Our farm operates as part of the Youth Grown program at FoodShare, which aims to provide youth with the opportunity to run their own independent farming venture. Our produce and flowers are available at the Evergreen Brick Works Farmers Markets, various city restaurants, a neighbourhood CSA, and are also donated to our local community fridge. The farm is run by Michelle Dang and Kevin Tran.”
What motivated you to start farming in an urban environment?
“Both of us grew up in Toronto and learned how to garden in our parents’ backyards. This upbringing definitely inspired our passion for growing food and tending to the land. It led us to work at urban farms and community gardens across the city, where we learned more about larger-scale farming, ecosystem health, and growing in community with others.
We met in 2023, quickly bonding over our shared Vietnamese heritage, Toronto upbringing, and desire to see more Southeast Asian vegetables in urban agriculture. We wanted to grow food that was important to us, in the place that we grew up. We were also motivated by a desire to make space for more BIPOC youth in urban farming, given the lack of available opportunities for them to enter the field.”
What are some of the benefits of urban agriculture?
“Urban agriculture has various benefits, but we have two we’d like to highlight. One of the biggest benefits of urban agriculture is how it promotes locally-grown food, flowers, and medicines. A lot of Canada’s produce is imported or transported from more rural locations, especially so for culturally significant crops. Urban agriculture can provide fresher produce, while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions and supporting the local economy. It also fosters a direct connection between consumers and growers, allowing both to better understand and meet each other’s needs, thus shaping local food systems collaboratively.
Another significant benefit of urban agriculture is that urban farms can act as community hubs. Urban farms create spaces where people can connect with each other, the land, and their food systems, which can better both individual and community well-being. This is especially important in cities where there is a lack of food literacy, but also accessible spaces for communities to meet and learn.
Urban farms can address these gaps by hosting community gatherings, workshops, farmers’ markets, and local events, all while fostering sustainable practices and environmental education.”
What types of crops and produce are best suited for urban agriculture, and why?
“Agronomically, most crops are suitable for urban agriculture. We’ve had success growing a diversity of multicultural vegetables, grains, flowers, temperate fruits and native plants….
Toronto has a relatively mild and long growing season compared to other Canadian cities, and so most crops grow well. However, the limited availability of land, investment, and infrastructure in urban areas restricts production capacity and scale. For instance, urban spaces lack agricultural infrastructure like hoop houses that extend the growing season, or sheds and barns that allow for more efficient crop drying, storage, and preservation….
More investment in urban agriculture and better support for farmers would be the biggest help in diversifying and improving crop suitability for urban environments.”
Tell us a bit about your farm, community garden, or green space.
“I grow in a network of front and back yards in North York, converting unproductive lawns into productive farmland.”
What motivated you to start farming in an urban environment?
“I began growing during COVID as a way to get my kids outside and off their computers. But I’d been interested in local food production for years before taking the leap myself.”
What are some of the benefits of urban agriculture?
“There are many benefits including incredibly delicious and nutritious food, the ability to grow varieties of food that don’t survive in the industrial food complex, revitalizing neighbourhoods, and providing more cover and absorption of heavy rains.”
What types of crops and produce are best suited for urban agriculture, and why?
“I’ve discovered that pretty much anything can be grown in an urban environment and in larger quantities than you’d think. Given our weather, there are some crops that are better suited such as short cycle crops. With the proper protection, you can grow through the winter as well.”
Tell us a bit about your farm, community garden, or green space.
“Wild By Nature is a permaculture Urban Herb Farm in east Toronto, which specializes in herbal products and hands-on learning experiences. We started planting here in 2015.
Our mission is to create opportunities for busy urban folks to experience the resilience, connection and abundance that comes from working in community, cultivating a relationship with plants and the land.
We are a focused herbal learning center, offering immersive experiences like workshops, retreats and a mentoring program. We have created a supportive volunteer community where people can put down roots and grow together, with the garden acting as a nurturing and empowering space.
We also produce a limited edition of herbal teas, botanical skincare, culinary seasonings and herbal remedies which we sell only at the Brickworks Farmers Market and the Evergreen Garden Market. As a bioregional herbal apothecary – we only use herbs that we grow at our farm to make our products.”
What motivated you to start farming in an urban environment?
“My first urban farm was planted in 1999 in Kensington Market. There was irony in being surrounded by so much food, but not being connected or having any relationship with it. Connection – in quality and integrity – with my food source has always been essential for me.
Also, I needed a place in the middle of a densely populated area, for inspiration and creativity to hear my rhythm and find where my place in the world was. By growing herbs, awakening my senses, and transforming our little front and backyard into a productive micro farm, I started to recognize what was truly possible for me and others.
Twenty years later, we were confronted with the pandemic. Everybody was so isolated, resources were scarce and community was forbidden. And yet, I felt very privileged to have a wealth of land, plants and experience. This compelled me to expand our herb farm and create a community where people feel joy and solidarity while experiencing the magic of working with plants in the middle of the city. To be able to nurture a plant and have something that you grew nourish you, is really powerful.
I feel like this is exactly where I’m supposed to be, and what I’m supposed to be doing.”
What are some of the benefits of urban agriculture?
“I think a lot of people could speak to the obvious reasons surrounding ecology, sustainability and quality. An important thread I want to speak about is relationships.
I am a community builder—of plants and people. The community which comes to learn here and to nourish themselves is actually also nourishing our business to be able to grow, which then provides more resources for me to put back into my community, to be able to continue to feed them.
The level of community involvement that I can create because I am in an urban setting is remarkable. Everyone can access us by any mode of transportation, without having to uproot their lives to go live on a farm out of the city.
Taking a pause out of your busy life to be submerged in a nature oasis affects you over time. It changes your mindset. And every single person that’s come to volunteer or study with us here tells us how much it’s changed their life to be here consistently.”
What types of crops and produce are best suited for urban agriculture, and why?
“I would say that as urban space is always at a premium the best crops to grow in an urban setting are the ones that you will cherish the most.
As an herbalist, herbs and wild foods are the emphasis for me. Herbs can give you a lot of yield from a little space, they usually do well in containers. My general advice for anyone wanting to grow in the city is: know your microclimate, grow good soil, start small and simple, build on your skills and space each year, and most importantly, grow what you love! ”
Tell us a bit about your farm, community garden, or green space.
“Sasa Naturals has 1,500 square feet of farmland in the city of Toronto. We grow at BCI Farm, in partnership with FoodShare. We use Indigenous farming practices and grow a variety of herbs and vegetables that we use in our skin care products.
Our goal is to create local, handmade and fresh skin care products that are excellent for your health and wellbeing. At our farm we have a variety of herbs that we grow, that include: Motherwort, Tulsi, Comfrey, Red Clover, Chamomile and Calendula that we use in our herbal salves, whipped butters and balms. We also grow root vegetables such as Carrot, Beetroot and Pumpkin that we use in our soaps.”
What motivated you to start farming in an urban environment?
“I have always had a passion for agriculture, first starting off by having a small garden and compost on my balcony, later becoming a farm apprentice and working on several Toronto farms and food initiatives, before finally graduating to having my own farm.
I felt it was beneficial to continue learning how to grow food and I wanted to share my offerings to my friends and family, which later on extended to the community. During the pandemic, I taught workshops online on how to grow your own food and connected with several farmers and initiatives globally.
Growing food, in my experience, is not just learning how to grow, it’s the freedom that comes with that knowledge of being self-reliant and sufficient and teaching others how to do the same.”
What are some of the benefits of urban agriculture?
‘The benefit of urban agriculture is creating an opportunity within an urban setting that allows individuals access to learn within their own communities. I find it’s very important to continue traditions of growing cultural foods and sharing recipes like our ancestors did.”
What types of crops and produce are best suited for urban agriculture, and why?
“The best types of crops and produce that are suited to people growing in an urban setting include: herbs, tomatoes, cucumbers, flowers and lettuce. These crops are easy to maintain and can be grown with limited space on balconies and in most cases indoors.”
September special: September ENDO compost tea will be available for free if you bring your own jar to the market (while supplies last)! Only at the Saturday Farmers Market on Sept 21.
Tell us a bit about your farm, community garden, or green space.
“Crooked Farmz is a Toronto-based micro-farm producing small-batch composts and aerobic compost teas for microbial health in agriculture, horticulture, and arboriculture. We serve seasonal teas at local farmers markets and garden centres, offer a compost tea CSA subscription service with 60+ members, and brew custom teas for professional clients across the Greater Toronto Area and into the Greenbelt.
We craft small-batch composts and liquid soil amendments of high-quality probiotics to deliver fresh and alive products across a wide range of contexts. Crooked Farmz operates out of a backyard farm in East York and a tiny teaching/experiment plot at Downsview Park Farm.”
What motivated you to start farming in an urban environment?
“At first I was trying to learn how to grow vegetables better, and so I started to get more heavily into making my own compost. We had an old, very traditional East York backyard that needed a lot of work on the soil, but I was adamant to remediate rather than dig out and purchase new soil.
This eventually led to the production of compost teas as well, and ultimately the soil started to really turn around. As these efforts became the Crooked Farmz of today, I also began to understand better that this was the type of farming I was practicing in an urban environment: that of compost farmer, or farmer of microbes.”
What are some of the benefits of urban agriculture?
“We can think of benefits environmentally, in terms of reduced fossil fuel usage for shipping produce great international and intercontinental distances. With greater proximity to our food growing, we also often witness a reduction in chemical inputs used by this type of production: people aren’t putting chemicals on their own foods!
Given the complexity of the city generally, urban agriculture also (always) opens up new opportunities and potentials for ‘ways of doing things,’ whether in terms of production, distribution, or community building. This benefit of urban agriculture is where we try to operate as Crooked Farmz.”
What types of crops and produce are best suited for urban agriculture, and why?
“Resilient crops are the ones best suited for urban agriculture, since we have some of the most challenging (micro)climatic challenges for growing food, and yet some of the poorest soils for meeting these ‘weird’ environmental conditions head-on.
Improving weak soils and weak plants will ultimately mean better harvests in the long run. For the same reasons, I believe biologically-active, microbially-biodiverse composts and compost teas are best suited for urban agriculture as well.
Coming back to the particular type of farm we have here at Crooked Farmz, while there are many ways to make compost and many types of compost product, we believe our compost teas can offer this type of restorative biodiversity to help build a resilient system of urban agriculture.”
Urban Agriculture Month at Evergreen Brick Works is a time to celebrate and support the local farmers who are making a difference in our community. Visit us throughout the month, especially during Toronto Urban Agriculture Week from September 14-22, to experience the incredible work of these dedicated urban farmers. Whether you’re interested in fresh produce, herbal products, or learning more about urban farming, there’s something for everyone at Evergreen Brick Works.
See you at the market!
