Strengthen local biodiversity and food security.

Bring seeds to swap (or not), learn about how to save seeds, get answers to growing questions, connect with resources and ideas. You don't need to bring seeds! Seeds are donated. The rules are to get informed, share freely, take only what you can plant this year, save seeds for future planting, swap seeds and have fun!!!

Seed Saving Protocol

1. Save from healthy plants. Even if a disease does not get passed on through the seed, we do like to have some selection for disease resistance by only saving from healthy, strong plants.

2. Save from a number of plants so that the seed has some genetic diversity in it. The quantity that is optimum depends on the type of plant, for self-pollinating plants a minimum of 6 plants is necessary, for cross pollinating you want to save from much a larger population- see seed saving information sheets.

3 .If the plant cross pollinates you want to make sure you keep it isolated so it stays true. Check with a seed saving chart or book to get isolation distances.

4. When you bring seed to share at the seed exchange please label with as much information as you can.  Place seeds in individual packets/envelopes, well labeled for sharing.

Dr. Vandana Shiva, PhD, philosopher, physicist, and eco-activist, discusses saving seeds, sharing knowledge, and the rightness of open source. Shiva believes that whether it is bleeding-edge technology or generation after generation of family farming, sharing and collaboration must be allowed, else valuable traditional knowledge will be destroyed.

Saving Plant Genetic Resources - Why?

"Seeds are critical to our success as gardeners and farmers. They are compact packages of genetic information and stored food reserves, just waiting for the conditions found in warm, moist soil in order to germinate and create tomatoes, carrots, beans and thousands of other delights out of sunshine, air, water and soil. For most of the last ten thousand years of human history, seed-saving was something nearly everyone practiced, because in order to eat and therefore to survive, it was necessary. The grains and beans which formed the basis of most diets were both seed and food. Grown in large quantities, the best were saved for planting and the rest were eaten. Our ancestors did this each year, generation after generation through the centuries. Variations in climate, soil and techniques from garden to garden and community to community, accumulated through the years, creating the incredible diversity which existed over much of our planet well into this century. These local seeds were integral to life and culture everywhere. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these varieties has disappeared." 

From Bill Duesing - Living on the Earth

Resources

Seed Saving Basics: How to Save Seeds

http://www.seedambassadors.org/docs/seedzine4handout.pdf

Vegetable Seed Saving Handbook  http://howtosaveseeds.com/

http://www.saltspringseeds.com/articles/how-to-save-seeds.htm

Books:

Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners (9781882424580): Suzanne   Ashworth, Kent Whealy: Books.

Saving Seeds: The Gardener's Guide to Growing and Storing Vegetable and Flower Seeds (A Down-to-Earth Gardening Book) Polly Alexander

Seed Sowing and Saving: Step-by-Step Techniques for Collecting and Growing More Than 100 Vegetables, Flowers, and Herbs (Storey's Gardening Skills Illustrated) by Carole B. Turner

Web

Organic Seed Alliance   http://www.seedalliance.org/

Seed Trust   http://www.seedstrust.com

“Diversity creates harmony, and harmony creates beauty, balance, bounty and peace in nature and society, in agriculture and culture, in science and in politics.” Vandana Shiva