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Don’t Feed the Plant, Feed the Soil!

Crooked Farmz is a small urban microfarm located in Toronto that produces high quality small-batch composts and vermicomposts for use in brewing fresh actively-aerobic compost teas. These are sold across the city by CSA subscription and at farmers’ markets for home gardening and urban agriculture use, as well as in larger quantities to professional gardeners and urban farmers.

We are passionate about the role that urban agriculture and horticulture might play in fostering biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and regenerative growing practice. Compost tea offers one important probiotic approach to building microbial health in soil and reducing the need for synthetic pesticides and fertilizers — plus so much more.

We are proud to be a new member of the Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario (EFAO), an organization of like-minded farmers across the province committed to building resilient ecological farms and growing a strong knowledge-sharing community.

As part of our commitment to these goals, Crooked Farmz is launching a west-end satellite and research station with the Fresh City Farm Partners project in Summer 2022: the Compost Research Array at Downsview Park (CRAY@Downsview).

Crooked Farmz on Instagram

first real look at the ground out back as we have a little microclimate there that keeps snow a week or so longer than everywhere else.... but was heartened to see a dozen or so mushrooms already up in the raspberry patch: sign of a good fungal environment!!

humus is a naturally occurring substance that is produced when organic matter decays on the surface of the soil and regenerates the living processes found therein. we can understand "composting" as intentional or artificial techniques developed since the beginning of "agriculture" to return organic materials to the soil in circular, relational processes of nourishment --- these are practised in many different ways by both Indigenous caretakers of the land and settler growers.

WOOT!! .... scads of seeds arrived from Compost Canada | @compostcouncil today as part of their Plant-Grow-Share a Row seed sharing campaign to support community vegetable growing and food security.... these will be used in the food gardens at our elementary school, out at the Downsview Park teaching plot, and here at Crooked Farmz for our Farm Fractionz foodshare program.

good morning everyone, and a happy Spring Equinox to you!! :)

this morning it's back to Zoom teaching again, leading my 2nd annual introductory workshop Soil Health and Microbial Life.... a reminder to everyone that our soils are ALIVE!

one of these years i will get the winter sowing done in winter!! .... some brassicas done here in the first wave, much more to come.....

EFAO Living Soils Intensive with Vivian Kaloxilos, Week 3....

a reminder to get your tickets for our upcoming matinee screening of KISS THE GROUND at the Fox Theatre on Sunday, April 23..... learn about the soil health behind regenerative approaches to agriculture and horticulture, and support Toronto Urban Growers | @tourbangrowers at the same time!!

for anyone interested, collated some notes from the Government of Canada's Canadian General Standards Board for organic production systems in this country as they pertain to compost tea....

i appreciate this message from @compostcouncil this morning..... "responsibility" and "gift" are two powerful words here, and to decenter ourselves a bit i think we could also add "reverence" and "gratitude" to this vocabulary: to what degree do we have reverence for building a compost pile and a gratitude for those gifts that bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes, and other arthropods, etc etc offer to us??

more than doubled the number of available pickup points around Toronto for fresh compost tea CSA subscriptions this season.... here's what our coverage is looking like as of March 10.