Shelter growing health and hope

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/07/2024 (494 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Siloam Mission will soon be saying ‘lettuce help’ to homeless people coming for a much needed meal.

That’s because the shelter, which serves hundreds of meals to people daily, will soon be able to serve fresh lettuce — as well as food using parsley, basil, and cilantro — thanks to a hydroponic system it has purchased and set up.

The mission’s new indoor vertical farm can grow 720 different plants in a space roughly four metres wide and 2 1/2 metres tall.

Kendall Giilck, Siloam Mission’s director of social enterprise and employment program, said roughly half of the plants currently growing are butter lettuce.

“We are so excited,” Giilck said on Friday. “We planted everything about a month ago and we will be harvesting it on Wednesday.

“The first order of business is to serve BLTs (bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches).”

Giilck said while they do get lettuce donated by grocery stores, by the time they get it, the vegetable is already very close to the expiry date.

She said with the lettuce they grow it will be fresh the moment it is picked.

“We are looking forward to seeing how we will be contributing to the meals.”

The idea for the vertical farm all started last March with a lettuce donation by a biosystem engineering Masters student at the University of Manitoba.

Trina Semenchuk, who is also the owner of The Little Greenhouse that Could, is writing her thesis on the amount of energy needed to grow vegetables with a hydroponic system.

Semenchuk said to get the data she needs for her paper, she grew 360 lettuce plants in a hydroponic system – and then didn’t know what to do with all of the vegetables she harvested.

“I called Siloam,” she said. “They were happy to get the lettuce.

“And, when I told them how I grew it, they were so excited by it. So I put together a project proposal for them, for their own system on site, they got the funding for it, and now they are growing their own lettuce.

“It feels really good – I just really want to use engineering to help communities.”

Darren Nodrick, Siloam’s director of development, said the produce they are able to grow is great because for most of the food they need they “rely so heavily on food donations from our generous supporters to provide nutritious meals for the community we serve.

“With the sharp increases in the cost of groceries, food donations are down and leafy greens are especially hard to come by. On top of the increased self-sufficiency, the vertical farm is proving to be a therapeutic outlet for folks in our employment readiness program.

“Gardening truly is good for the soul.”

Giilck said it takes about a month to grow the lettuce so they could get as many as 12 harvests a year.

She said the people who are looking after the vertical garden don’t have a gardening background. Make that most of the people.

“One said he used to work at a grow op with my cousin 20 years ago,” said Giilck chuckling.

“I said that’s exactly what we are looking for.”

She said the workers, who are currently homelessness or escaping it, are all paid.

Giilck said they are already are hoping they will be able to build similar vertical gardens at other residential facilities Siloam operates in Charleswood and the Wolseley area.

And they are also looking at the possibility of other plants.

“We would love to grow strawberries and cherry tomatoes — everyone loves those,” she said.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca