Cultivating Vegetables, Community and Curiosity

IN BACKYARDS, community gardens and urban farms throughout Detroit, Hamtramck and Highland Park, a crop of more diverse vegetables are finding their way through the soil and onto dinner plates thanks to farmers who are looking to bring a taste of their homelands to Michigan.

Thanks to immigrants and the efforts of longtime local residents, curious cooks and growers nostalgic for the vegetables they grew up eating and loving no longer need to search far for the ingredients they need, such as snake gourd, bitter melon, bottle gourd, Mexican green chilis or Thai basil.

When chef Meiko Krishok opened her first kitchen in Hamtramck, she was amazed by the foods local Yemeni and Bengali residents were growing and selling. Today, as the owner of Pink Flamingo, a farm-to-table carryout restaurant and caterer in Detroit, she continues to use these vegetables in her cooking, including her favorite: calabash squash. This vegetable is often found in Krishok’s coconut curry soup.

“It comes in so many different colors, sizes and textures,” Krishok says. “It feels special because it ripens during the harvest season and it’s such a lush, rich vegetable.”

Angela Lugo-Thomas, a garden development manager for Keep Growing Detroit (KGD), participated in the organization’s first cultural foodways project at the KGD Farm in Eastern Market this summer. Lugo-Thomas, a native of Puerto Rico, filled her plot with culantro (an herb with a strong cilantro-like flavor), sweet peppers and pigeon peas. The project’s other growers included those with backgrounds from the Philippines, Jamaica, Venezuela and the African diaspora.

Rice with pigeon peas is a classic Puerto Rican dish, while culantro and sweet peppers are key ingredients in sofrito, the base of many Hispanic dishes.

“It’s like having a little piece of home here,” Lugo-Thomas says, recalling her childhood yard stocked with mangos, avocados and other tropical plants. “It’s important to have a piece of my culture here in Detroit.”

At Sylhet Farm on the border of Hamtramck and Detroit, garden plots are bursting with vegetables from many different cultures, including Bengali. In fact, the farm, which opened in 2022, is named after a region in Bangladesh where many local residents were born.

Rumana Rahman, the community garden director, who was also born in Bangladesh, loves to visit the farm and admire the variety of crops, including bitter melon, snake gourd, bottle gourd, amaranth (a plant in the same family as quinoa that is grown for its leaves rather than its seeds), lamb’s quarters (a leafy green that is often called a weed in Western countries) and more.

“It’s the most amazing place to see people from all over the world grow things from their own culture,” Rahman says. “I’ve learned about so many plants that I didn’t know were edible.”

These gardeners and farmers have done much more than bring their cultural crops to Detroit; they’ve also changed their communities and created a new sense of community. It’s a result that chefs and growers know well—evidence of the power of food to bring people together.

Sylhet Farm is located in the parking lot of a former auto dealership in an area that was full of blight. Now, the sprawling area of well-stocked raised beds is a refuge for adults and children of all backgrounds.

“I think it’s the most diverse space in Hamtramck,” Rahman says. “It feels like we reclaimed the land for our community.”

Krishok also aims to strengthen the local food system through her work at Pink Flamingo. The restaurant hosts pop-up dinners every Thursday from May through October in Corktown. Menus and details are available on the restaurant’s Instagram account.

“I use food to build community and our local food system by supporting the people who are growing the food,” Krishok says. Her kitchen is known for its partnerships with farms that grow vegetables that were initially not native to Michigan but now have taken root here, an effort that started with her search for a local supplier of dae-pa, a vegetable similar to leeks. “Local produce helps contribute to our vitality as a community.”

Lugo-Thomas’s passion for growing has drawn her to create gardens and encourage community at additional locations throughout the city. She also has plans to create a space dedicated to Puerto Rican crops and culture. The project is called La Casita Cimarrón y Yuketi de Detroit, or La Casita for short.

“Food connects us more than it divides us,” Lugo-Thomas says of her discovery that many Puerto Rican ingredients are also used in other countries such as Jamaica, Venezuela and the Philippines. “We’re so accustomed to being separated, but we’re more alike than society tells us.”

Growing or cooking with vegetables from other parts of the world may not be as daunting as it first appears. For Lugo-Thomas, her biggest challenge was obtaining seeds. A company called True Love Seeds out of Philadelphia sells seeds for many of these plants.

And Krishok has been collecting seeds from the plants she uses in her kitchen— some of these are available by request at Pink Flamingo. She recommends others also collect seeds from their favorite vegetables. For many of the Bengali and Yemeni vegetables grown at Sylhet Farm, seeds or starter plants are often available at stores in Hamtramck.

For those needing cooking inspiration, recipes and ideas can be found in many Facebook groups and online forums dedicated to vegetables not native to the U.S. But the best source is often the growers themselves. Local farmers and the staff at the Keep Growing Detroit table at Eastern Market are eager to share their techniques and tips. Sylhet Farm is open to the community daily. Many growers at the farm are also happy to share cooking ideas and seeds.

Keep Growing Detroit, which supports more than 2,400 family, community, school, and market gardens throughout Detroit, Highland Park and Hamtramck, is a good resource for those interested in starting or expanding their own garden. The organization provides education, workshops and resources to help the city achieve food sovereignty.

Rahman says one factor is the most important for those learning to grow and cook vegetables they may not be as familiar with.

“Be curious,” Rahman says. “Ask questions, have conversations, gain a different perspective. If you’re curious, it will be easy to get inspired.”

Keep Growing Detroit
detroitagriculture.net
1445 Adelaide, Detroit

Sylhet Farm
sylhetfarm.org
12818 Joseph Campau, Detroit

Pink Flamingo
pinkflamingodetroit.com
Pink Flamingo to Go
17740 Woodward Ave, Detroit

Pink Flamingo
Corktown Pop-Up
2746 Vermont St
Thursdays, 6–10pm, summer only

Shannon Mackie is a marketing professional and freelance writer. Also a self-published author, she lives in Detroit with her family.