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CANADA: Salad Days Vertical Farming Company Growing Business With Microgreens Subscription Program
For Scott Hyndman and Adam Dudek, the entrepreneurial learning curve has been as steep as their vegetable farm is tall — that is to say, very
For Scott Hyndman and Adam Dudek, the entrepreneurial learning curve has been as steep as their vegetable farm is tall — that is to say, very.
Years ago, the friends were sitting on Dudek’s Osborne Village balcony on a sunny summer day, admiring his tomato plants and grumbling about how difficult it was to find high-quality local produce year-round. The conversation became the catalyst for 3 Guys Greens, an urban vertical farm founded by the duo in 2016.
"If we’re frustrated with it, I’m sure there’s a lot of people who are frustrated with this too," Dudek says of Manitoba’s short growing season. "So we started looking into: how can we do this? There’s gotta be a way to grow this stuff indoors year-round."
Adam Dudek, right, and Scott Hyndman of 3 Guys Greens, a local vertical farming company, are offering a mixed greens subscription program. RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
They rented warehouse space and started experimenting with vertical gardening and aquaponic systems to grow microgreens for local restaurants. Dudek is a plumber by trade and Hyndman is a trained chef — backgrounds that made up for what they lacked in business and agricultural experience. "This sort of farming is pretty much all plumbing," Dudek says with a laugh. "We’re consistently learning and consistently growing."
Until the COVID-19 pandemic hit, 3 Guys Greens sold microgreens — young, nutrient-packed vegetable sprouts — directly to restaurants as a garnish. The public health crisis has thrown the industry into turmoil and cut off a major revenue stream for the entrepreneurs.
Nutrient-rich micro greens can be used on a sandwich, in salads or cooked as a side dish.
RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
"With the restaurants being shut down, there’s no real desire for them to have the added cost of garnish when they’re just putting it in a takeout box," Hyndman says. "That’s kind of why we wanted to go towards (selling) direct to the consumer."
This month, the company launched a salad subscription program that will see Winnipeggers getting greens and dressing delivered to their door once a week. The salads include a base of sunflower and pea shoots and a rotating blend of garnish mixes made from micro arugula, radish shoots, brassicas and mustard greens. They’ve also partnered with local catering company Loaf and Honey to create specialty salad dressings.
A monthly subscription costs $80 and each salad kit is expected to be enough greens for three to five days worth of meals, depending on how customers use the product. The microgreens can be eaten solo, added to other dishes or cooked as a side.
"The greens on wraps and sandwiches are absolutely amazing," Dudek says. "The pea shoots and sunflower I like to sauté with a little bit of lemon juice and some garlic."
Hyndman is a big proponent of the nutrient value of microgreens. One 2017 study out of Idaho State University found that broccoli sprouts had larger quantities of certain beneficial nutrients compared with their fully grown counterparts.
"You can eat your whole entire (microgreen) salad and you’ve eaten your 30 pounds of greens for the week," Hyndman says. "(Or) you can replace your normal lettuce on your burgers and in your tacos or whatever, and you still get to eat what you love, but now you’re incorporating these highly nutritious, nutrient-dense microgreens into your diet."
Operations manager Michelle Lecnik checks the status of the towers of basil.
RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
The microgreens take 10 days to mature and are grown to order.
Since 2016, 3 Guys Greens — which was named when there was in fact a third business partner — has moved three times and now operates out of 26,000-square-foot building with rows upon rows of heavy-duty growing racks and four staff members. The system uses energy-efficient LED grow lights and minimal water, which gives traditional agriculture a run for its money, according to Hyndman.
"One of our towers grows roughly 50 plants on it, so basically in one square foot of our growing space we’re able to do roughly 100 feet of row farming," he says.
The company started growing basil last year and hopes to raise different kinds of produce in the future. They’re also working to develop vertical farming systems within northern Manitoba communities.
Visit 3guysgreens.com for more information and to sign up for their salad subscription program.
Twitter: @evawasney
eva.wasney@freepress.mb.ca
Eva Wasney
Arts Reporter
Eva Wasney is a reporter for the Winnipeg Free Press.
Urban Oasis Project Launches CSA Program
Since 2009, Art Friedrich, co-founder of Urban Oasis Project, has had one goal in mind: to make healthy, local food more accessible to all
JOSIE GULLIKSEN | OCTOBER 2, 2020
Fresh produce boxes like this will be part of the Urban Oasis Project's CSA program. Photo courtesy of Urban Oasis Project
Fresh produce boxes like this will be part of the Urban Oasis Project's CSA program.
Since 2009, Art Friedrich, co-founder of Urban Oasis Project, has had one goal in mind: to make healthy, local food more accessible to all.
Friedrich and his group of volunteers do this by teaching people in underserved communities to start and maintain food gardens. They also connect consumers to local produce through farmers' markets and fruit and vegetable subscription programs in conjunction with various health clinics.
Five years ago, Urban Oasis operated the CSA (community-supported agriculture) program for the Farm at Verde Gardens. That experience, and urging from its loyal customers to start a program of its own, prompted Friedrich to kick one-off.
The weekly CSA box will cost a flat fee of $40. Inside, customers will find a surprise assortment of locally grown produce.
The CSA program is a win-win for farmers and consumers alike, Friedrich says. “We get to buy more from local farms and the customers get a premium, first-dibs selection of what’s available. Because of the standardization and commitment, we will be able to offer more produce for less price."
For the program, Urban Oasis will be drawn from multiple farms they’ve been working with for years, plus any new local ones they can find, Friedrich adds. It will be a multifarm CSA," he says. "It will be a shorter commitment than the usual CSA because we have a lot more flexibility since we also run farm stands at so many farmers' markets.
Since the coronavirus pandemic closed Urban Oasis' in-person farmers' markets around town, Friedrich and his volunteers have found a new, larger home at Radiate Fermentation Lab in Allapattah to store, pack, and sort produce.
“This current site is much more developed and helps us keep everything fresh. We converted an old walk-in fridge into our packing area, so it keeps everything nice and cool,” Friedrich says.
Since the pandemic descended, Urban Oasis has been packing community food boxes to give to families in need. Before that, it had staged a variety of special events for different groups, including a Thanksgiving giveaway for the Miami Dade College Hialeah campus. "We’ve done this for the past few years and it’s very similar to what we’ve done with the fruit and vegetable subscription program," Friedrich says.
Friedrich says all of Urban Oasis' projects serve one main goal. “We want to connect people to fresh, seasonal produce. The online store and our pick-up and delivery gives people another option. And because we are used to doing deliveries now, CSA feels like a very natural extension of what we do,” he says.
Creating the CSA program is also a homage to horticulturist Booker T. Whatley, an agriculture professor at Tuskegee University in Alabama who is credited with introducing the CSA model to the United States in the 1960s. Sam Vazquez, who with Ashley Varela runs Urban Oasis’ Project Maracuya, a CSA-style SNAP box program for families experiencing food injustice for a variety of reasons, did extensive research on Whatley.
“CSA has been an important part in the growth of the local food movement therefore, it’s imperative for the public to know that the roots of this very important development of farms came from an African-American farmer,” Friedrich says.
Friedrich anticipates reopening Urban Oasis' farmers' markets at Legion Park and the Arsht Center the weekend of October 24, and in South Miami and Vizcaya on November 7.
“We’re excited to get the physical markets back open but even when they do, we plan to keep the online market as long as people keep ordering and, of course, keep up the CSA Program,” says the Urban Oasis cofounder.
Order an Urban Oasis CSA box at urbanoasisproject.org.
Josie Gulliksen is a Miami native who's been covering Miami's arts and culture scene for more than two decades. She loves biking, spending time in nature, eating out, and attending all types of events. She dreams of one day writing a play and being on the stage.
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Josie Gulliksen FOLLOW: Twitter: @josiegullikse
As The Pandemic Continues, Urban Gardening Is Growing on New Yorkers
At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, concerns over the food supply chain began increasing nationwide as popular food items flew off the shelves and grocery store lines grew to alarming lengths
JULY 27, 2020
BY MILI GODIO
Samuel’s Food Gardens (Photo courtesy of Samuel S. T. Pressman)
Samuel S. T. Pressman had wanted to build a food garden on the rooftop of his Clinton Hill apartment for years. The artist and sculptor had lived on a farm when he was younger and had studied Sustainable Environmental Systems at Pratt. But in a city with a “time is money” mentality, he never found the right moment to start his passion project.
That changed when New York underwent a statewide Pause order in mid-March. Now, Samuel’s Food Gardens is tackling the city’s food insecurity problem by providing fresh fruits, vegetables, and herbs to community gardens that advocate for food security. “I wanted to explore what most people’s living situation is here,” Pressman said, “where they don’t have any land and have hardly any outdoor space that they own, and how they can still be able to grow some food using a system that is designed to actually make it possible to grow more food than you think per square foot.”
At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, concerns over the food supply chain began increasing nationwide as popular food items flew off the shelves and grocery store lines grew to alarming lengths. This panic, along with a sudden abundance of time and collective distress over going to crowded supermarkets, contributed to a surge in backyard gardens and private farming initiatives. Even as the apocalyptic anxiety began to settle down, the gardening craze didn’t seem to stop. With at least 10 million more people unemployed in the United States compared to pre-COVID figures, feeding families continues to be at the top of everyone’s priority list.
Samuel’s Food Gardens (Photo courtesy of Samuel S. T. Pressman)
Despite its tiny living spaces and skyscrapers galore, NYC is no exception to the gardening trend. Residents like Pressman have begun to utilize spaces on rooftops, patios, and even the edges of classic Brooklyn-style buildings to create more green space in the area.
Having previously worked with Friends of Brook Park Community Garden in the Bronx and having designed and led construction for Newkirk Community Garden in central Brooklyn, Pressman has always found ways to support underserved communities and advocate for inclusive community food growing. He began Samuel’s Food Gardens not to sell the food that he grows, but to continue his work with community gardens and help individuals with private gardening areas maximize their spaces and get the most out of their crops in the long term.
New Yorkers are engaging with food in new ways. That has led to a spike in produce sales at the three green roofs operated by Brooklyn Grange Rooftop Farm, and an increased demand for their services designing, installing and maintaining private green spaces. “I think that there’s, to some degree, a process of reconnecting with simple pleasures and when it comes to the kitchen, that means really high-quality, fresh ingredients that are good for you,” said Anastasia Cole Plakias, the urban farm’s co-founder and chief operating officer. “I think that there’s this realization that supply chains have a role to play in our recovery here.”
Brooklyn Grange (Photo courtesy of Anastasia Cole Plakias)
In its ten years of operation, Brooklyn Grange has sold over 400,000 pounds of produce through weekly farmers markets located in Sunset Park, Greenpoint, and Long Island City, a CSA program where people obtain the farm’s harvest through a seasonal subscription plan, and a seed-to-plate initiative that provides food to local restaurants and retailers.
Cole Plakias says Brooklyn Grange was set to sell roughly 100,000 pounds of produce this year, but once restaurants began closing across the city and in-person events came to a halt, the farm’s business model had to quickly shift away from restaurant crops and towards feeding and nourishing the community.
“We’re seeing a lot of interest from people in having us convert their outdoor spaces to food-producing spaces, or more habitable green spaces,” said Cole Plakias. “We’re seeing a tremendous amount of interest in garden maintenance services because people are recognizing the value of urban green space.”
The company has managed to secure multiple partnerships that not only keep their farms in business, but also keep restaurants open and ensure food accessibility. Tasmanian footwear company Blundstone funded a full season of produce donations and kept farmers and staff employed. To deliver emergency food relief, Brooklyn Grange partnered with Rethink (their Brooklyn Navy Yard neighbors) and Food Issues Group, both organizations dedicated to providing equitable food systems in NYC and keeping restaurant workers employed, especially during a global pandemic.
With more New Yorkers cooking at home, the demand for fresh produce at farmers markets and through CSA programs has steadily increased during the pandemic, Cole Plakias says. Add to which, there has been a dramatic boost in demand for the farm’s virtual farming and composting workshops.
There have been a variety of online learning opportunities for prospective gardeners in the city. GrowNYC, which has been teaching city folks how to maintain urban gardens for years, offers virtual classes, and the New York Botanical Garden began hosting virtual workshops after it closed in March (the garden is set to reopen on July 28).
Union Street Farm (Photo courtesy of Garrison Harward)
The Union Street Farm, near the corner of Union Street and Rochester Avenue in Crown Heights, also offers free, in-person gardening classes and open volunteering, giving local residents hands-on experience with growing and maintaining a full-functioning garden. “We’ll do some tasks that need to be done in the garden and through that work, we talk about gardening,” said Garrison Harward, who began his work at the Union Street Farm in 2016. “It’s open for whatever anybody wants to learn.”
Harward’s love for gardening was influenced by his own family’s garden in his California hometown. In 2010, as a sustainable agriculture volunteer for the Peace Corps in Senegal, he began investigating regenerative agriculture and different methods of agricultural systems for economic gain and food security. The freelance lighting technician has maintained the Union Street Farm for the past five years, after it was given to him by two fellow neighbors who were too elderly to maintain it.
Harward favors no-till gardening, meaning he doesn’t turn over the soil or disrupt the structure built by bacteria and fungi. Aside from being healthier for plants, it leads to really great water infiltration, according to Harward. “Every drop of water that falls on the plant bed stays exactly where it is – I have zero runoff that goes into New York watersheds, which is environmentally friendly. Not putting nitrates into the watershed, all those ways in which agriculture contributes to algae blooms and fish die-offs.”
Union Street Farm (Photo courtesy of Garrison Harward)
Harward believes there has been a marked increase in gardening since the pandemic, which leads to more people reaching out to him for advice and resources. Initially providing seedlings to neighbors that were interested in growing their own food, he soon began giving them away to people all over the country. So far, he’s sent out eight varieties of seeds to roughly 120 people who reached out to him on Instagram. He even launched a Facebook group titled “NYC Gardening Resources,” where he virtually assists new and experienced gardeners alike.
The Union Street Farm’s harvest is free for anyone that visits or casually stumbles upon its gates. Although Harward holds free farmers markets every Sunday for people to take home the fruits, vegetables, and herbs that he grows, he welcomes people to take as much as they need, whenever they need it.
“I think there’s a lot of realization that we don’t have to tie everything to a financial transaction,” Harward explained. “There’s so many different ways that we can support each other. Like, we’re exchanging goods, we’re exchanging culture, we’re exchanging connections within our neighborhood and if it doesn’t have to be monetized, then why should it?”
This ethos is not uncommon in New York City green spaces, where avid gardeners like Harward and Pressman hope to make their hard work and agricultural talents accessible to all. Pressman and his Circular Communities team are currently developing projects such as the Micro Food Hub, which promotes social equity in the agricultural sphere and facilitates the production and exchange of food by connecting community gardens, food producers, restaurants, and consumers via a digital platform, and he hopes to host school tours at his food garden where he can spark a passion for food growing within students and young people. Pressman also intends to ship out DIY planting kits in the future and provide teaching tools that instruct the basics of utilizing small spaces – including greenhouses during the winter – to maximize food growth efficiently and cost-effectively.
“There’s this special relationship you have to have with the plants to be able to help them and train them,” said Pressman. “It kind of opens up a whole new door for how humans actually emotionally feel around nature and I think people are seeking that out right now, they just might not know exactly how to get it into their home.”