Host a Seed Exchange Party!
By Vanessa Richins
As the gardening season slowly draws to a close, there are still many opportunities for urban gardening fun.
One of these could be a Seed Exchange Party!
Perhaps you had a bumper crop of your favorite heirloom bean. Sue, who also lives in your town, may have extra tomato seeds. Joe has squash seeds.
If everyone brought their seeds to a party, everyone could end up with three different kinds of seeds for next year instead of just one.
First, you would need to save some seeds. Methods differ for every plant, but for most, let the fruit sit on the stem until it is fully mature or dried out. You should be able to remove the seeds and save them for future use. Be sure to label them with the year harvested and variety.
Next, you need to find people to exchange seeds with. There are many ways of spreading the word.
1) Talk to your neighbors.
One of the easiest ways would be to talk to the people that live around you to see if they are interested. You could also put up flyers.
2) Join a local garden group.
I belong to the Utah Garden Exchange, a Yahoo! group. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/UtahGardenExchange/ Members ask questions and get together to have seed exchange parties.
3) Craigslist or other local classifieds
On Craigslist, there are a couple of different sections where you could place an ad for a seed exchange party. I would suggest choosing “Community,” “Free” or “Barter”. There is also a “Farm + Garden” section.
Finally, have your party! Perhaps it could also be a potluck to make it more festive.
Have you ever been to a Seed Exchange Party?
September 19th, 2008 at 6:57 am
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September 19th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
I love having those type of get togethers with friends - seed exchange, food exchange, whatever. It’s a great idea to grow together as friends.
September 26th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
[...] section of your craft store; even Target has some neat scrapbooking papers) and then host a seed swapping party as Vanessa Richins suggests (anyone in So Cal want to meet at a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf and swap [...]