Chris Wong (Photo by Jonathan Zettel)
Christopher Wong pulls up in his car to a residential house along a quiet street in Toronto where he tends a garden planted and harvested by his company Young Urban Farmers. He rhymes off the names of everything that’s been planted: there are pole beans, snow peas, wild strawberries and sage. He’s planted okra, chard, and dinosaur kale. There’s baby tiger zucchini, lemongrass, scotch bonnet peppers and what must be at least three or four different varieties of tomatoes.
There’s a bright orange flower that looks like it could sprout some sort of squash or pumpkin. Wong reaches down, breaks off a green leaf and some of the orange petals. It’s a nasturtium, a flower sometimes used in salads and stir-fries. He hands me the smooth green leaf and I place it on my tongue. The unassuming plant burns with spice.
Young Urban Farmers was founded over three years ago by Wong and his partners, Jing Loh and Nancy Huynh. Having just graduated business school at Queen’s University, Wong says it was the perfect time to create a green business. The environment was in the public consciousness and people were already spending millions of dollars a year on landscaping. Why not translate some of that cash into an investment with a tangible return? Instead of having a manicured lawn that simply looks pretty, why not have a garden, equally as pleasing to the eye, and yet it annually produces fruits and vegetables?
Even if you live high up in a condo, with only a small sunlit balcony, Wong and his team can help you too. The entire company is catered to the specific needs of the customer, incorporating personal eating habits, available space, and amount of sunlight. If you want Young Urban Farmers to plant, tend and harvest, they can do it all.
Back in the garden, Wong has spotted a tall pigweed poking out of one of the self-watering containers he installed last spring. He grabs hold of it and rips it out. It’s not only the weeds that keep Wong busy; the cucumbers have been attacked by a common fungal disease, powdery mildew. You’ve got catch it early, Wong says, and remove the infected leaves. You can also use a combination of water and apple cider vinegar, baking soda, or powered milk. The calcium, says Wong, is what does the trick.
It takes a lot of diligence to tend a garden, something for which Wong doesn’t lack. He’s delighted to see that the pole beans are nearly ready for harvest. Several months ago he erected a series of wooden rods in the shape of a tepee and over the course of a couple weeks the entire five foot tall structure was covered in bean leaves.
As an educational adjunct to their company, Wong and his partners have created the non-profit organisation, Young Urban Farmer’s Community Shared Agriculture (YUP CSA). With three large scale gardens across the city, YUP CSA encourages Torontonians to participate in a community of urban farmers. It’s an outreach program that aims to teach just how much food can be grown in a small space.
Underneath the mulberry tree, Wong points out some shiitake mushroom logs that are nearly at the end of their cycle and a compost pile nestled in the back corner of the yard. Last week while turning the soil in the compost pile, Wong unwittingly found a wasp’s nest. He was stung once, but it didn’t faze him. For this young urban farmer, it was all in a day’s work.
“It can be dog eat dog out there,” Wong says. “We’re the complete opposite of that.”
