City Beet is an urban farm growing vegetables and cut flowers on residential front and backyards in Vancouver, BC on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. While the exact number tends to shift a little from year to year, we currently have 14 yards that add up to roughly half an acre, which is pretty small for a farm, but is plenty of space to grow tons of delicious crops throughout the growing season. In exchange for the growing space and access to water, the homeowners whose yards make up the farm receive a weekly portion of vegetables throughout the summer season.
We sell most of our produce through a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) model, which is where members pay up front to join us for the whole season. They then come and pick up their share of our harvest each week from June through October. We run our CSA Pickup market-style outside the Federal Store cafe, which is in the same part of the city as many of our yards. The CSA model is wonderful for farmers and customers alike, as it provides much-needed cash flow and security to the farmer early in the season, and our customers get to experience seasonal eating, ensure they’ll be getting their veggies in, and really get to know where their food comes from.
The phrase ‘grow food not lawns’ really sums up a lot of what we’re about at City Beet. Lawns are under-used and often wasted spaces in cities that guzzle up a lot of water, don’t provide habitat to native species, and have an elitist social history to boot. Our farm challenges conventional ideas of separated land uses, increases urban biodiversity, engages urbanites in the food system, and feeds our neighbours; all while demonstrating how much food can be grown in such small spaces– as many of you gardeners surely know! One of the most affirming things we hear from neighbours to the farm is that walking by our yards has inspired them to grow more of their own food in their gardens.
Establishing New Yards – We are always on the lookout for potential new sites to join the farm. This year we were lucky enough to find two that were close enough to our existing yards, sunny and big enough to be great fits! Our system for converting a new yard from lawn to growing space is very similar to what you might do to start a new personal garden plot– just on a larger scale. We first cover the lawn with a silage tarp for at least a few weeks to kill the grass and weeds that are growing there. Then, we gently turn over the top layer of soil and remove the (hopefully fully dead!) plant matter. We practice low-till methods at the farm because we want to build healthy soil that is able to maintain its structure, but when establishing a new bed sometimes a little more soil disturbance than desired is necessary. After that, we form our beds, add compost, and get planting! In a newly-made bed, planting transplants or something with a big ‘seed’ (like potatoes) is a safer bet than direct seeding. One of our new yards this season went from lawn to producing delicious cucumbers in just three months! The other one is currently fully planted with three varieties of potatoes that we’ll be harvesting starting in August. Last season our potato yard produced over 1,000 lbs of potatoes.
Crops We’re Excited About – Growing for a CSA means finding a good balance between staple crops and more unusual crops or varieties that members might not buy on a typical grocery run. As past CSA members ourselves, we know the new crops are exciting to receive, but figuring out how to prepare too many at once can be overwhelming. At the time of writing this it’s early July after a warm late-spring. Our summer fruiting crops are flowering or have already started to set fruit. To name a few, we have several varieties of heirloom tomatoes we’re eagerly awaiting– Brandywines and Striped Germans are some of our favourites, as well as shishito peppers, three varieties of eggplants, cucumbers and more on the horizon. Later on in the season, we’ll have some new-to-us varieties of pole beans, fennel, potatoes, and winter squash. Some of our favourite crops to grow around here are the ones that need to be trellised: indeterminate tomatoes and sugar snap peas especially bring us lots of joy.
Whether you’re growing for a customer base of hundreds, for your neighbours, or just for yourself, growing food is a challenging and rewarding endeavour. We learn so much each season and approach our work with a sense of playfulness and gratitude that we get to feed our community while helping re-imagine how our city spaces can sustain and nourish us.