2025 Farm Season Recap

That’s a wrap on our tenth growing season at The North Grove’s Community Farm! Here are a few highlights from an incredible season. 

Weather ups and downs 

In April we had to dig our bok choy out from under the snow (though we still got a great harvest)! June was a month of frequent rainfall, and then we faced an intense drought through July and August. 

From left to right: early April snow on the farm; youth volunteers harvesting peas; volunteers harvesting flax; annual flowers along the perimeter.  

A 1,300-pound harvest 

Despite these challenges, The North Grove community harvested more than 1,300 pounds of fresh produce! This included nine types of tomatoes, five types of bok choy, and five types of hot peppers! We also harvested a record-breaking amount of sugar snap peas - more than 100 pounds! 

We grew more plant varieties than ever this year – 81 to be exact! The increased diversity of cultural vegetables from around the world reflects the diversity in this community. We grew luffa for the first time.! We are planning to save some for sponges, and we have already used some for food, including in Rose's Luffa Soup Food Demo.  

From left to right: greenhouse tomatoes thriving; volunteers harvesting Daikon radishes; Rose holding our first ginger harvest; volunteers and staff weighing Hakurei turnips 

Experimenting with new crops 

Among other new crops were chayote, turmeric, and ginger which our farm staff started in their living rooms way back in February. We grew sweet potato (primarily for its leaves!), bitter melon, saffron crocuses, and daikon radishes, and a number of new herbs in the pick- me boxes and tea garden. 

From left to right: long eggplant; chayote; bitter melon; saffron crocuses 

There was so much variety and colour on the Harvest Table at the Good Food Market every week! Certain items were extremely popular at the Harvest Table, in particular bitter melon, long eggplant, okra, and Lal Shak (red spinach), so, we plan to grow more of them next year. We will move from growing eggplant and okra only in the greenhouse to growing them in rows outdoors. 

A selection of Harvest Table photos from this season! 

Hot peppers!  

Things really started to heat up this fall! We tried a new pruning technique on our hot peppers, which produced an enormous amount – between 20-100 individual peppers a week throughout September and October.   

From left to right: Cayenne peppers on the plant; Hong Gochu, Vietnamese Devil pepper, and Cayenne in jars; a volunteer admiring the peppers; Siling Labuyo peppers (VERY spicy!) 

Excellent egg layers 

As always, the chickens brought joy to everyone who met them – even the neighbourhood dogs walking by! The six chickens were very productive, each laying an egg nearly every day, which meant that we had dozens of fresh eggs to share with the community free of charge each week at the Good Food Market Harvest Table. 

From left to right: the chickens saying hello; Partnership & Events Lead Ashley checking on the chickens; one of the girls sitting on several eggs in the laying box 

There’s still work to be done on the farm this season. It looks like harvesting will continue in the greenhouse and under row covers until the end of November. Before long we will be preparing for next farm season. We will be sowing seeds for some crops as early as January! Stay tuned for more growing news and we hope to see you on the Community Farm again next year!