Pick your produce at the peak of freshness – straight out of the ground – at Rid-All’s Urban Farm.
Tomatoes, okra, fresh herbs, greens, even edible flowers are just some of the types of fresh produce available for picking and purchase at the farm. Rid-All’s farm, located off East 81st Street and Kinsman Avenue, is open Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
“We have customers come down and walk the farm and pick what produce they want,” explained Rid-All farm manager Jasean Rice. “If you’re an experienced farmer and you know how to harvest, I’ll let you go ahead and harvest what you want, then get you out of here. But if not, I can always harvest it for you.”
A walk through Rid-All’s fruit orchards
“You can find all types of fruits and vegetables, depending on the season,” said Rice, walking through the farm’s fruit orchards. “The thing about orchards is, what everybody doesn’t know is, you won’t get fruit all at the same time. Every tree or bush has its time of year that it likes to grow.”
“So the first thing we usually get is apricots. Apricots have already come and gone. Black walnuts, they come. Elderberry bushes, they’re in bloom. The cherries, they then come next after that. The peaches will come next. Strawberries come early, and the raspberries are pretty much the last thing to come.”
Listen in as Rice explains how Rid-All fights back against damage to its orchard caused by Asian lanternflies:
Inside Rid-All’s hoop houses
Rid-All has several hoop houses that have fruits and vegetables growing year round. Rice says as long as he can keep the hoop houses around 50 degrees, the plants will survive. In fall, he rolls down the canvas-lined sides of the hoop houses and edges the hoop house with wood chips to keep the plants insulated.
“Anything that’s really finicky, I just take it home and keep it over the [winter] season,” he said.
Rice grows okra in the hoop houses and said he harvests the okra plants every two days. He also regularly harvests tomatoes from 6- to 7-foot-tall plants, both red and green. Swiss chard is also grown there – Rice said the chard will continue to grow and be harvested far into the winter. There are several beds of bell peppers, cayenne peppers, eggplant and jalapenos. Rice said that, just last week, he harvested 10 pounds of jalapenos for Shawnda Moye of The Roaming Biscuit, who uses them to make jalapeno relish.
Not just a ‘fish tank’
Rid-All is also home to a fishery where they raise tilapia sold to local chefs, restaurants and grocery stores. There’s a tank set up in one of the hoop houses known as an aquaponic system. The fish live in a large tank with two pipes coming up that suck the fish food and wastewater up to a canopy level that then distributes the water to rows of plants sitting above the tank. The plants suck up the nutrients from the wastewater before it filters back down into the tank clean.
Listen in as Rice explains in further detail how the aquaponic system works.
Rid-All hosts many programs as a member of the wider community, including agricultural programming for youth and veterans, international partnerships and programs and composting. Rid-All also runs the Farmer Jones Indoor Produce Market in Maple Heights, open seven days a week, and hosts one of Cleveland’s most popular urban festivals, Fresh Fest Cleveland, the second week of every September. For more information, visit their website.
