This year I'm going to start saving a lot more seeds.
It has many benefits, it saves money, plants get adapted to your own conditions and you can select the traits you want in your vegetables (smaller, bigger, colour etc).
But as well as this I want to start swapping seeds with fellow gardeners and bloggers around the country.
If you've got an interesting vegetable that you grow and always recommend it to everyone then I want to have it!
My plan is relatively simple. In late autumn/early winter, when we've all saved our seeds from our favourite vegetable plants I'll take any that you want to give away, I'm planning on saving my small sweet pepper seeds and cherry bomb chillies for starters and maybe cucamelons, just make sure none of the seeds are from F1 plants. Then once everyone who wants to be involved has sent me their seeds, I'll divide up what we've got and everyone gets a selection of all the other seeds sent back to them.
This blog post is just to see if anyone is interested in this idea (it's only going to work in the UK due to the legality of it) or if you know other bloggers who might be interested and don't follow this blog then let them know and point them in this direction.
If we get enough people interested it could be a great way to increase our varieties of veg for the price of a couple of postage stamps!
Interested my good man but this year I am bereft of seeds to offer.... Excellent idea and I can see this seed growing into something quite large.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure we can help you out with some seeds with a SAE if we get enough interested. Spread the word!
DeleteBrilliant idea, but as I have yet to get growing here I have no seeds to save :-(
ReplyDeleteI'll join in with pleasure next year. Good luck.
If that's the case, just let me know if there's any off the list of ones I'm doing and you can have some anyway.
DeleteExcellent idea, it's a shame that we can't join in seeing as how we live in France!
ReplyDeleteIt's not too far, maybe we could anyway...
DeleteI will WILLINGLY give you my packet of Cucamelon seeds without swapping - just to give them a new home! colinorsue@hotmail.com
ReplyDeleteI'll take them from you! The girls do love them!
DeleteOddly enough just this last Thursday I heard about a similar thing here being organized by libraries.
ReplyDeleteEach Thursday at the library a group of mostly knitters and crocheters meet, and once a year we have a craft sale which raises money for the library. In previous years the money was used to buy a display cabinet, a lectern and to redo the display about Gus Grissom (for whom the library is named). Plans for the library are in flux, renovations are needed but the funds haven't been allocated. At the moment the plan is to use the money to buy cabinets to store seeds in (and crazily enough they are like the drawers that used to have the index of the library which were disposed of when catalogues went digital). Some money would also be used to purchase the initial seeds.
I hope you do well with your seed swap.
Helen
It's always the same with government run things, they sell something and then a few months later buy nearly the same thing back at three times the cost. Sounds like a really interesting project and a nice group to be a part of. I always have dreams of starting a smallholders/homesteaders club around here but I doubt I could get enough people interested.
DeleteI would be interested in participating, although I havent got many saved seeds this year but do have a collection of heirloom seeds there are too many in the packets for us to use. Would that be acceptable.
ReplyDeleteYep! anything really. I'm not sure how I'm going to go about it. Maybe have a list and people pick what they'd like or do a bundle of different ones for everyone all marked up. I'm open to ideas.
Deletei will not give names of people from different countries who i have sent seeds to, and received seeds from. what we do is put the seeds in a little bag and then wrap the bag in paper towel to fill the envelope. when you shake the envelope - you don't hear seeds rattling. then you don't need a customs form - it's just sending a card to a friend - get me on this? i would love some of those cucamelons as i have never had them. and i have a whole pile of stuff i could send in return. how about some comfrey seeds,heal-all (self-heal), st. john's wort or evening of primrose? let me know.
ReplyDeleteyour friend,
kymber
Lets do it then! I might have sent cutting to Africa at a certain point in the last year (although I might not of if anyone important is reading this). I'd certainly be keen to have some veg and herb seeds from you and it would eb a great way to try growing different things.
DeleteKev - i am pretty certain that you sent no cuttings to Africa at any point in your life. so those important people can now move on. my email address if kymberzmail@gmail.com which directs email to my personal email. once i get your email, i will reply back and we can figure out what seeds we are not going to secretly send to each other. because sending seeds to each other from different countries is not only bad....why, it's frowned upon - bahahahahah! get in touch with me buddy!
Deleteyour friend,
kymber
Great idea. I have some bean seeds to give. I have some heirloom Lazy Housewife that can't be sold, but can be given away, so this would be perfect, I also have some soya- "ustie", Ying Yang, Climbing Borlotti, and butter beans. Oh yes and I have quite a ,lot of perpetual spinach seed too. Any good?
ReplyDeleteGill
All sounds good! Should be interesting to see what we end up with!
DeleteI don't really have any seeds to send, since I tried gardening for the first time in two decades this year and got washed out by the unusual rains. But it's a great idea and you are doing everybody a service by coordinating it.
ReplyDeleteGood for you folks on your Prime Minister doing something about terrorists coming back into the country. Don't suppose you would consider letting us have him for a leader for a bit, like lend lease in reverse. Our Golfer in Chief says he has no current strategy to deal with the issue.
Gardening never goes right first time! Make sure you try again, it's quite addictive after a while!
DeleteAs for the polities issue, I tend not to talk about it much but you're welcome to him! I'll send him over on the weekend...
Well isnt that just the bummer that I can't join in the seed swap!! Pooy!! ;O)
ReplyDeleteOn the peppers when I dehydrate them, just take clean peppers and chop them up .. put them on your dehydrator sheets.. Dry to hard.. Then seal them up in a glass jar. What I do is put them in water with a dab of salt in it to rehydrate them if what I am making doesnt have enough juice and time to rehydrate them. If I am making soup with juice and time to cook, I just toss them in dried and let the soup do the rest. I read somewhere when rehydrating dried veggies if you would put a dab of salt in the water your redhydrating in it would help the process. So I do.
I'm thinking about revising that issue as it could make it more interesting and like Kymber said we should get away with it!
DeleteWhat a wonderful response to your swap! I'm in Australia, so I can't join in, but I am keen seed saver and its great fun swapping with other seed savers and encouraging everyone to have a go :)
ReplyDelete