Grown small, on purpose.
Gold Leaf is a Vancouver microgreen farm with one stubborn idea: the freshest green is the one that's still growing when you eat it.
Most greens are cut, bagged and trucked days before they reach you — losing flavour and texture the whole way. We do the opposite. We grow ours indoors, vertically, and hand them over still rooted in the tray.
The box carries it home and no further: lift the whole mat out onto a plate, keep it in good light, and cut with scissors right at the mat whenever you cook. It stays in good shape for days longer than anything in a clamshell, tastes brighter, and the only thing you throw away is a compostable mat. That's the whole philosophy, and it's the reason our tagline isn't marketing — you really are what you eat.
Why microgreens
Microgreens are vegetables harvested young — days after sprouting, when the flavour is at its most concentrated. Each one tastes unmistakably like itself: sunflower like a fresh seed, radish like pepper, mustard like a clean shot of wasabi.
Why I started
I started growing microgreens for my children. There was a whole kind of green that never made it onto their plates, and I did not want dinner to turn into an argument about it. A living tray settled that. It comes home still rooted, nothing is harvested until you cut it, and they cut their own straight onto their own food.
Setting the table has picked up a new question at our house — “which greens shall I cut for you?” — and they stop and think about what they want to add to what is already there. That question only exists because there is more than one tray on the counter. With one, there is nothing to decide.
It is also why we grow four rather than one. They run on a single line from mild to fiery, so between them they cover a week instead of competing for the same plate. My own breakfast is eggs with the wasabi mustard, and I rotate a second variety alongside it so it never gets predictable.
Grown for Vancouver
We're starting where we live — at local farmers' markets and with home delivery that opens one neighbourhood at a time, as each fills up. It keeps us small, keeps everything fresh, and means every tray is grown to order rather than to a warehouse shelf.
Snip fresh. Waste nothing. Eat things that are still alive.
Gold Leaf Premium Foods — a Canadian premium food company.
Living microgreens are where we started.