Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Alternative sources of seeds

It's the giving season so let me remind all you out there that it is good to save and share seeds. To increase your karma even further just give them away. That's right, invest in some cheap tiny plastic baggies or small paper envelopes, and put in your extra seed. It will be even better if it were saved from your own garden!

Now that you are ready to give, why not receive? Gardeners are normally generous people and if someone lists seeds to give away that means they are expecting you to ask for them. Really. They aren't just kidding. Sometimes, they are merely great people who like to share and other times they are great people and they believe that seed saving and distrubition by the people for the people is an important political project.

Here are some places and organizations where you can learn more:

Seeds of Diversity Canada
Seed Savers Exchange
Blogger Seed Network
Plantcycle Ottawa
Gardenweb Forums

And if you are really into edibles including plant breeding then you might be interested in:

Homegrown Goodness

Let's revive the time honoured tradition of seed sharing and break our reliance on commercial seed to grow our own food. Many times, the only source for seed I was looking for has been from a fellow gardener not even from my beloved local OP / Heirloom seed companies. In the spirit of this let me repeat:

"If I write about a plant that reproduces by seed that you are interested in trying, email me (email is under my profile) and if I have extra, I'll send it along. You do not need to trade me anything for it. You do not need to send me postage if it is just a small order as I am willing to forgo a couple coffees a month for this effort. All I ask is that you consider doing the same one day. It does not have to be this year. Gardens can be fickle things and seed saving is a learning curve. If it reproduces vegetatively (ie, cuttings, prunings, tubers) then it will only be available around the Ottawa area for pickup but I am happy to suggest sources in your area if I know of them. I don't list all the seeds I have available in my availabe seed list as some I only have smallish quantities of most seed."

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Interested in knowing more about saving vegetable seed?

Fellow bloggers at Grunt and Grungy's Garden are writing a series on seed saving.

2 comments:

Bishops Homegrown said...

Great post friend and thanks once again for the plug! BTW, it's nice to have a pic to look at on the message board so I have some idea of who I am talking too! Thanks again friend!

Edward said...

Sharing seeds is a wonderful thing. I sent some extra daylily seeds to someone in Germany that I met throught the internet.