Photo

Andres Batista, a livery driver, talks on the phone near the urban farm in the Spuyten Duyvil section of the Bronx while waiting for a dispatcher’s call.Credit Christian Hansen for The New York Times

As Pedro Santana waited to pick up his first fare on a recent Saturday night, he stepped away from his cab, leaned over and plucked an ear of corn from a tall green stalk growing next to a sidewalk in the Bronx, shucking and halving it in one motion.

“I like the plants,” he said, popping kernels into his mouth as he surveyed his crops.

Mr. Santana is known to his colleagues as “No. 40,” a reference to the livery car he drives for Seaman Radio Dispatcher. He is also an urban farmer.

Summer is the slowest season for cabdrivers, when they must find ways to pass the time between passengers. Some recline in the seats of their cars; others relax outside.

But Mr. Santana, 66, and other Seaman drivers spend their downtime tending a small farm off Johnson Avenue in the Spuyten Duyvil section of the Bronx, near Riverdale.

“It was just a few guys,” Daniel Montes, a driver, said of the farm’s origins. “They just got together and started doing this.”

The farm began about 15 years ago with a few tomatoes and beans planted along a thin, unused strip of land behind a 30-story apartment building. It has grown into a thicket that stretches about a quarter-mile.

There are pumpkins hidden under some brush. A cluster of peanut shells hints at the legumes growing underground. Two small tomato plants jut out near the sidewalk.

“There was a big pumpkin, but somebody took it,” Bienvenido Rojas, a cabdriver, said.

These days, as the farm flourishes, the drivers lend a hand in one way or another. Some clear the land for the next crops, while others plant seeds. There is no formal structure to the labor.

The work has its challenges. Despite a lack of rain and the loss of access to water from a nearby fire hydrant that no longer works, this summer’s corn stalks have shot up to about 10 feet tall.

The farm surprises some people who walk by, and, sometimes, even the drivers themselves. On a recent Saturday, Cristobal Florentino, a driver, jumped onto a steep, rocky outgrowth to pluck a striped squash.

“Look! This is amazing,” he yelled, holding it out like a newborn baby.

Eva Rosenfeld, 54, a property manager who lives nearby, reached out and touched a husk to, in her words, “see if it’s real.”

Another woman, Maria Bower, posed for a picture against the backdrop of the tallest corn stalks and marveled at some black beans that were cupped in her hand.

The farm’s purpose varies depending on whom you ask.

Mr. Santana, who grew up on his father’s farm in the Dominican Republic, said he liked to grow vegetables for people who have never seen a bean plant, for instance, or other foods in the raw. Children and adults stop to take pictures, and those who stumble on the unlikely urban farm express appreciation.

Another driver, Oscar Pantagua, 43, said the hobby also connected other drivers back to the farming culture of the Dominican Republic, the homeland they share with Mr. Santana.

“They know about planting, and they love that,” he said.

The younger Seaman drivers learn from the veterans about how and when to clear the soil, plant the seeds and pick the vegetables. They said that working together created a special kind of camaraderie.

Belkis Tavarez, 48, said she knew nothing about farming before joining the livery company.

“I didn’t even know you could put a little corn on the ground and it grows,” she said.

Equally impressive, she said, was the meal concocted by her colleague, Angel Adanes, 52, who gathered tomatoes from the plot and added them to an omelet with garlic, ham and onion.

“I bring the lunch for everybody from that tomato,” he said.

Manuel Gomez, 50, who helped start the farm, said that he did not eat any of the food that came from it. He simply enjoys passing the time with his fellow drivers in the community they have built.

And while others “blah, blah, blah,” Mr. Gomez said, “I’m working.”