Last Monday I arrived early for a tour of The Stop’s Green Barn. My tour guide, greenhouse coordinator Lord Abbey, hadn’t come in yet.  Another employee greeted me, inviting me to make myself comfortable and wander around. It wasn’t hard to do; The Stop’s space is very inviting. I poked around checking out the books, gazing out the window at the melting ice rink, looking in at the kitchen.

But peering through the doors that lead into the greenhouse is what really stopped me in my tracks. It was hard to look away. Looking through those glass doors was like looking into another world. When Lord arrived he gracefully introduced himself and led me through the doors.

Walking into the greenhouse is like being transported to the tropics. It’s warm, the air is moist, and the landscape (food) is a lush green. There are avocados growing in one corner, cassava in the other, and…oh yeah - oranges, grapefruits and lemons!

Yup, a little piece of paradise (minus a beach), hiding out in Toronto’s Hillcrest neighbourhood. Ok maybe not hiding, it’s a pretty big greenhouse, but still not a place I had visited. Although my first visit will definitely not be my last, more like the first of many.

Lord Abbey is the greenhouse coordinator and has extensive knowledge and experience working with plants.  He holds a PhD in Plant Science, is a Professional Agrologist registered with the Ontario Institute of Agrologists, has conducted research in plant eco-physiology at the Crops Research Institute in Ghana, and further research in the UK. This guy knows plants! And now he’s sharing his knowledge with the The Stop community.

When the greenhouse started, green crops were the primary focus. About a year and a half ago, that changed a bit.  Lord decided he wanted to experiment with fruit trees. So he did. He began with what he knew. He had experience growing blood oranges, ruby red grapefruit, and meyer lemons; all fruit he likes! It’s probably safe to say they are fruits everyone likes. They are also the fruits that travel many miles to reach our tables. Well, now they’re being grown in Toronto, and they are growing well!

So how, I asked, did this happen?

Grafted seedlings originally came from Humber Nurseries. Grafting is a technique by which one plant is selected for its stock and another selected for its fruit. A mature bud is taken from the fruit plant and fused with the stock. The technique is used to help accelerate growth and production. Once the bud and the stock have fused, the bud should start to produce leaves.

The seedlings have performed extremely well in the greenhouse. They are now approximately 3 to 4 feet tall, and are producing anywhere from 8 to 18 individual fruits.

With the success of these trees, Lord has been able to start his own set of seedlings grown from the seeds of the mature fruit. From here he and his volunteers will perform their own grafting experiments. There are interesting possibilities. One idea is to graft one or two different fruits to the same stock, possibly creating an orange lemon tree.

Seeing these trees and hearing about the possibilities was/is amazing. The kids in The Stop’s after-school programs are already cooking with the ripened fruit, and there is more production in the works. Papaya is next, and hopefully – fingers crossed – a cocoa tree will be planted down the road (there are permissions needed to grow cocoa). In the meantime we can dream that one day in the not too distant future the greenhouse will be offering up its very own brand of chocolate!