Cultivate Toledo begins planning Huron Street's first hoop house, taking urban farming year-round
Cultivate Toledo begins planning Huron Street's first hoop house, taking urban farming year-round
Four-season growing is the difference between a seasonal project and a livelihood
Cultivate Toledo, the urban agriculture program launched in 2024 with support from the Vistula Foundation and United Way of Greater Toledo, has begun planning and design for the first hoop house at its Huron Street Farm — an unheated greenhouse structure that will extend the farm's growing season deep into the Ohio winter.
A Toledo farm that stops producing in October is half a business. Under a hoop house, cold-hardy crops keep growing — and selling — through months when local produce otherwise disappears, roughly doubling a farm's productive season and, with it, what the farm can earn. For farms built to run as micro-enterprises, that math is the point: year-round production means year-round revenue, steadier customers, and a business a farmer can live on.
“A hoop house is not a nice-to-have — it is the difference between a seasonal project and a livelihood,” said Thomas Waggoner of Cultivate Toledo. “From here forward, every farm we build is planned for four seasons.”
Design work through the fall and winter positions construction for Spring 2026.
Every farm we build is a business we launch.
A Cultivate Toledo farm is a micro-enterprise: built in 150 days, operated by a trained farmer, and earning income from its first harvest. Your gift funds the build — land preparation, hoop house, irrigation, beds. The farmer's own revenue carries it from there. Give once, or grow with us monthly.
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