Savvy Seed Care
(Page 4 of 6)
December 2006/January 2007
By Barbara Pleasant
Seed Swapping Suggestions
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Putting your seed box in order may take a few hours, but one immediate payoff is discovering that you need to get more seeds! There’s plenty of time to buy them through a mail-order company (where you are more likely to get high-quality seeds than from racks in stores), or you can swap seeds with other gardeners. Either way, you’ll want to balance various variety-related characteristics such as flavor, color, nutrition, weather readiness, disease resistance and productivity. We try to help with those decisions by suggesting outstanding varieties in every gardening article we publish, but you should not deny yourself the pleasure of drooling over the pages of your favorite seed catalogs.
Perhaps this will be the year you commit to helping preserve worthy heirloom varieties, or maybe you’re ready to start selecting and saving seeds from your favorite open-pollinated crops. Either process will go faster and be more fun if you network with an organization such as the Seed Savers Exchange. You also may be able to find a group based in your region. For example, the University of Georgia now hosts the Southern Seed Legacy program, which helps members share seeds of nearly 500 Southern heirloom varieties. Dozens of master gardener associations in the United States sponsor local seed swaps once or twice a year. In Canada, Seeds of Diversity sponsors more than 40 Seedy Saturday events that always include swapping opportunities. If you’re new to saving seeds, start with a crop that’s easy to grow in your climate, because excellent growing conditions contribute to the production of bigger, better seeds. For more about saving seeds, read “Grow Your Own Seeds” (October/November 2003).
Your seeds need you to keep them safe and strong. Soon, the day will arrive when they’ll need you to do other things they cannot manage on their own, such as getting from your seed box to that cushy seed bed you’ve been dreaming about. Such partnerships between people and seeds have been going on for millennia, with each side serving the other to create a more productive and beautiful planet. Right now it’s your turn to act.
Seven Seed Box Tips
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