Urban-grown produce fills baskets at West Island food bank
Urban agriculture is turning underused green spaces into vegetable gardens, filling local food banks like the West Island Mission with fresh produce.
Crops are planted and harvested from May until October to ensure food bank clients have nutritious, organic vegetables in their baskets.
This is the first year West Island Mission, located on Labrosse Avenue in Pointe-Claire, is farming in Senneville. At 2,000 square feet, it's the biggest of their 120 plots and planters across the West Island.
Jack Jones, operations manager for Wet Island Mission, said all those gardens add up.
"It works out to be a lot of really nice greens," he told CTV News.
Each green space is maximized, and the growing season season is extended to collect three to four harvests before the frost settles in.
"We grew a whole bunch of lettuce, it timed out perfectly for the fall harvest. Lettuce, radishes, zucchinis, bok-choy, arugula -- things that do well in colder weather," said Jones.
The produce gets picked at its peak twice a week and is brought straight to the food bank.
"We have stuff that's coming in from Fritz Farm, from the city farms, so we put all that together, and it's weighed and measured at the West Island Mission. So by the end, it should be close to eight to 10 thousand kilos, and next year, we hope it will be even more than that," explained West Island Mission executive director Suzanne Scarrow.
REPLACING GRASS WITH GARDENS
Based in Verdun, the company Urban Seedling plants high-yield gardens in underused green spaces on private or public land.
"That space can be better used to grow food and help people who are having a hard time these days," said co-founder Shawn Manning.
Urban Seedling's mantra is why not plant an "edible oasis" where a patch of grass used to be.
Manning said that giving back is part of their own mission.
"To be able to have that positive impact is so important to me. I grew up in food insecurity, and Father Emmett Johns was a huge influencer."
Johns was the founder of Dans la Rue, a homeless shelter and support organization for Montreal youth.
"Before he started Dans La Rue he would come to our house," Manning recalled. "He was my mom's chaplain when she was in an orphanage as a kid, and he would come in and check in on us when I was young."
The hope is that bit by bit, urban gardens will nurture generosity for neighbours in need.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
ANALYSIS Will Donald Trump go to prison? What the precedent says
Now that the jury in Donald Trump's criminal trial has made the historic decision to convict him, the judge overseeing the case will soon face a monumental choice: whether to sentence the 2024 Republican presidential candidate to time behind bars.
A pair enjoyed pricey meals and bolted when it was time to pay. Their dine and dash ended in jail
A Welsh couple who dined out on pricey meals and bolted when the bill came is now paying the price, behind bars.
The northern lights are returning to night skies across Canada this Friday
If you missed the brilliant displays of the aurora borealis over North America on May 10, you may have another chance to see them on Friday night.
Montreal tech billionaire charged with several sex offences
Robert Miller was charged Thursday with several sexual assault charges after Montreal police reopened an investigation into the tech billionaire.
Can Trump come to Canada now that he's a convicted felon?
A Canadian immigration lawyer says now that Donald Trump is a convicted felon, he is technically barred from crossing the border into Canada.
Liberal government's own polling said Canadians worried about drug decriminalization
Months before British Columbia sought to scale back its drug decriminalization pilot project, the federal government's own polling suggested to officials that a majority of Canadians believed the policy would lead to an increase in overdoses.
Loblaw testing out small-format No Frills grocery stores
Loblaw is testing smaller-format discount stores across the country this year as shoppers increasingly look for ways to save on their grocery bill.
Doomsday plot: Jury convicts Idaho man of killing wife and girlfriend's 2 children
An Idaho man was convicted Thursday of killing his wife and his new girlfriend's two youngest kids in a strange triple murder case that included claims of apocalyptic prophesies, zombie children and illicit affairs.
'Why didn't they stop?' Mom asks of driver in hit-and-run crash that killed son
The mother of a 13-year-old boy who was killed in a hit-and-run in Edmonton is begging the driver to come forward.