YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Christina Sabo started The Green Roof Urban Farm as a way to earn money after Covid left her with lingering symptoms.
More than two years later, the microgreens business boasts one restaurant and 12 individual subscription customers. She delivers the product across the Mahoning Valley, from Niles to Columbiana.
“We’re up to 16 different varieties … and then I am branching out into edible flowers,” Sabo explained.
Greens include broccoli, radish, cantaloupe, cabbage, pea, kale, sunflower and a spicy salad blend with dill, parsley, basil and cilantro rounding out the herbs.
“So they’re leafy greens,” she said. “So it’s broccoli; it’s radish. It’s the same broccoli and radish that you know and love, that you’ve been eating your entire life. I just harvest it at 10 days old.”
That bulks up the nutrient value. An article on Cleveland Clinic Health Essentials says that research shows microgreens may contain four to 40 times the nutrients of their mature counterparts.
Harvesting happens when the greens grow their first set of leaves and reach about 2 to 4 inches tall.
They make tasty – and nutritious – additions to more than just salads.
“Think of any way that you would use a leafy vegetable like spinach or collard greens or anything like that,” Sabo said. “So you can put them on sandwiches, wraps, on scrambled eggs.”
And individuals don’t have to change their whole diets to glean microgreens’ benefits.
“If you’re eating a sandwich, put microgreens on it,” Sabo said. “If you’re having a wrap, put microgreens on it. You can have them with any food.”
But the flavor of microgreens differs from that of the mature plant.
“Sometimes they have a milder flavor; sometimes they have a unique flavor; sometimes they have a stronger flavor,” she said.
It’s the nutrient wallop though that really sets microgreens apart. Broccoli microgreens, for example, contain four times the cancer-fighting antioxidants as the adult vegetable, according to an article on a U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service website.
Customer’s Experience
Jim Logan, general manager at Homestead Kitchen and Cocktails, has been a customer of the Green Roof Urban Farm for about two years. The farm-to-table restaurant in Columbiana uses products from area farmers. It was using microgreens from a handful of people, but they didn’t last more than a few days.
Sabo’s “hold out longer than any of the other ones we’ve ever had,” Logan said. “The flavors are so much better. The product just looks so much better than the other things that we’ve experienced.”
He calls Green Roof Urban Farm’s product the most top-tiered microgreens Homestead Kitchen and Cocktails has ever had in its building.
“They make a wonderful garnish,” Logan said. “They all have such unique flavors that they add to a dish. It’s just kind of been one of our staples that we use to garnish all of our dishes, multiple different kinds of microgreens.”
That includes dishes on the restaurant’s brunch and dinner menus.
“We top pretty much everything with some microgreens,” Logan said.
He orders different varieties, including radish and sunflower, for the restaurant.
“She even does a really good cantaloupe one that is unbelievable,” Logan said. “The taste of it – it tastes like you bit into a fresh cantaloupe. It’s out of this world.”
How She Started
Sabo worked as a dog trainer before Covid landed her in bed for three months. She took a medical leave, but her symptoms persisted and she wasn’t able to return to work. She started researching to find a way she could earn money working from home.
“I needed to pay my cellphone bill and my car insurance,” Sabo said. “That was actually my goal.”
More than two years later, the Green Roof Urban Farm is her only income source and covers all of her bills. She operates from the foyer in her West Side home, with the microgreens growing in trays on lighted racks along a wall. She uses organic seeds and soil, and the lights provide additional heat.
Sabo plants every Monday and Tuesday, harvests Wednesday and Thursday and delivers each Friday. Some subscribers receive deliveries weekly; for others, it’s twice weekly or monthly.
The edible flowers she’s adding to her offerings include nasturtium, orchids and a mix.
“And then I’m doing an oxalis – is actually what it’s called,” Sabo said. “And I did learn from that. It’s like the new biggest thing in New York. It’s like all the really high-end restaurants are doing oxalis. It’s a flower, with like a shamrock leaf. It’s really pretty.”
For more information, visit Green Roof’s website or Facebook page.
Pictured at top: Christina Sabo, owner and founder of The Green Roof Urban Farm.