Homestead T.O.

06/11/2025

✨Beautiful evenings at the farm ✨

05/28/2025

A camouflaged cutie in the lettuce bed tonight!

05/28/2025

First harvest from the plot! The Tuesday class shared in this beautiful lettuce tonight - we already have 👍🏻👍🏻 from someone who ate it once they got home. Doesn’t get fresher than that!

05/06/2025

It’s a beautiful week to be at the farm! This week we’ll be prepping more beds, direct seeding and transplanting. 🌱

03/28/2025

Our seedlings in the greenhouse are coming along! If the weather cooperates, we’ll be shifting our classes from online to in-person in 2.5 weeks, and some of these babies will be planted in the teaching garden!

03/15/2025

We are SO excited - our seventh year of the Grow Veggies program starts this week! There’s still a few days to register for our Online Program - visit our website for more info! There are 8 spots left. We can’t wait to grow with you this year! 🌱

02/06/2025

Check out these three workshops we’re leading in the next couple of months. We’re always happy to volunteer with Friends of Allan Gardens. 🌱

Starting Family Day Monday!

Join us at Friends of Allan Gardens' Urban Agriculture Workshop Series, where we'll provide urban gardeners with the knowledge, experience, and materials that you'll need to properly plan your garden, start your seeds, and set up your seedlings and garden for success!

Garden planning starts with understanding the basic needs of your plants. We’ll take you through what a plant needs to grow (it’s not just sunlight and water!), and we’ll teach you how to match those needs with what your garden can provide so that you can find the best spot for each plant. You’ll finish the workshop with a working plan on what, where, and when to plant in your vegetable garden this year. A well-designed plan can set you up for a successful growing season!

Starting your own seeds is a great way to save money, it broadens the variety of plants that you can grow, and prepares you to save your seeds down the road. In this workshop, we’ll teach you about seedling lifecycles, what seeds need to germinate, and how to properly care for your seeds and seedlings until they’re ready to be transplanted outdoors.

Note, these workshops will focus on growing outdoors in both in-ground garden beds and in containers. We’ll focus on vegetable garden growing but most of the same concepts will apply to other plants as well.

These workshops will be led by Derek Barber of and hosted by Amanda Johnson of the Friends of Allan Gardens. These workshops are pay-what-you-can but a $25 cash donation recommended.

Register at FOAGUrbanAgWorkshops.eventbrite.ca

01/01/2025

Happy New Year, friends! In this month’s Grow With Us newsletter we chat about ordering seeds, growing indoors, and garden research. The link to read and subscribe are in our profile. Thinking about joining our Grow Veggies program this year? We still have some spots left in our Thursday in-person program and in our online program - we look forward to growing with you this year!

01/01/2025

Happy New Year, friends! In this month's Grow With Us newsletter we chat about ordering seeds, growing indoors, and garden research. Thinking about joining our Grow Veggies program this year? We still have some spots left in our Thursday in-person program and in our online program - we look forward to growing with you this year! https://mailchi.mp/0f9deece46aa/grow-with-us-january-2025-newsletter

12/01/2024

Registration is now open for our 2025 Grow Veggies program! Visit our website for more info and to register: https://homesteadto.com

🍅 Our full season, in-person program provides you with hands-on learning at our urban farm in Downsview Park and a share of the harvest.

🥦 We also have an 8 week online program that includes live sessions with plenty of time to ask questions.

🥕 We are on a mission to help build resilience in the city by getting people’s hands in the soil and teaching them how to grow their own vegetables. Join our community of people from all backgrounds, of all ages, to share in the experience of growing food together!

11/30/2024

Registration for the 2025 Grow Veggies season opens tomorrow - you can learn all about our program on our website. Don’t hesitate to send a DM if you have any questions. https://homesteadto.com/

10/12/2024

And that’s a wrap on our last official Grow Veggies class of the season! This week we did a big harvest, took down the trellising, and planted garlic. One of my favourite things is that this year’s students plant garlic for next year’s students, who plant garlic for the following year’s students, and so on. Next week we have an optional session to put the rest of the teaching garden to bed for the winter, and then we’ll start prepping for next year’s program. 💖