lets share seeds: 2010 Seed Share

After my post on Monday on friendship and seed saving I thought about a really BIG, really GREAT, idea. What we have here in this blog o sphere, is a really wonderful community of like minded folks. A lot of us garden, and many of us are trying in some way shape or form, to lighten our load on the Earth by the way we do things. What I am proposing today, is a 2010 Seed Share.



Basically, all you have to do is pick one or two plants from your garden, patio pot, or farm that you would like to save seeds from. If you know nothing about seed saving I encourage you to check some books out of your local library. It is really simple and not very time consuming at all. It goes right along with the process of having a garden, and really does not require much more time than gardening does. A couple of books on the subject I can suggest are located in my sidebar, the first one being my favorite, Seed to Seed, by Suzanne Ashworth.



So, here’s how it will work. You save seeds from a plant or two in your garden. Once everyone is enrolled, I will match people up so that we all can get some different varieties of seed then what we choose to send. Depending on how many people sign up, the numbers could vary greatly here. You will mail out some of your seed, in a small labeled envelope, to approximately five to ten people. In return, you will be mailed five to ten samples of new seed from various other crops and people. Both flowers and vegetables are welcome. Any seed that you can save would be a great addition to the 2010 Seed Share. The only thing I do ask is that you only save seed only from heirloom or organic plants. Unfortunately, hybrid plants do not always grow true to seed, since they have been genetically altered.



This obviously is an experiment/ new creative endeavor on my part. One that I hope will possibly provide many of us with a fair amount of “free” gardening seed for 2011, as well as, the opportunity to grow and learn together about the importance of saving seed from our gardens for the future. No matter what we get in return, we will most importantly get the knowledge and experience of seed saving. It is here where we will learn how to take the harvest full circle. I hope you will not only consider joining in this adventure with me, but also share, blog, facebook, email, etc. so that we can reach out to as many people as we can and see what this all amounts to! The more people are involved, the more variety of seeds will be available.



I have set up a separate email for the 2010 Seed Share as well as it's very own facebook group. If you are interested please email me at letsshareseeds@gmail.com with the type of seed you would like to share. Take your time deciding, and don’t worry if you change your mind later on, I will follow up with everyone in early fall. I am not sure yet about a cut off date or how many people to involve. I feel at this point I’ll just see how it all goes and then possibly make a decision about that later on. After a bit of research, I realized that this will only be able to include those in the US and Canada. If you live elsewhere though, I would love to have you for the support. I have created a button for this project and would be honored to see it supported amongst fellow bloggers. Just grab the button and link it to this post.

Together we can grow our harvests and in friendship share in its bounty!