Ladner Seedy Saturday & Garden Expo 2015 Seed Swap

Ladner Seedy Saturday and Garden Expo is just three weeks away and we are working hard to bring you the best event ever. Today I want to encourage you to bring your seeds to swap. We will have a couple of tables set up for trading. Try to bring in your seeds between 10-10:30am so we can place them alphabetically and make sure they are packaged up properly. The seed swap starts at 10:30 and runs until 2pm. 

This is how I like to package my seeds. I use two inch coin envelopes and write the name of plant, number of seeds, year the seed was bought or collected and if the seed is hybrid or open pollinated. Most people who trade seeds will only take open pollinated seeds so check your seeds closely. Open pollinated seeds will come true from collected seed. Hybrid seeds that are bought seed are okay as they will come true but their collected seeds will not.  Hybrid seeds come from two parents and like our families, our children are not identical to their parents. 

 

This is what we will not be able to use on the day of the seed swap. Please refrain from bringing in large quantities of seed such as the bag above. We are too busy and the seed may have to wait until the next year to be traded adding another year of questionable viability.

 When bringing seeds to trade, please remove all the chaff and seed pods from the seed as much as possible. We don't expect perfection but you can see how easy it would be to remove the pods from the bag above. The seeds can be placed in a paper bag to dry and all the seeds should fall to the bottom.

Try to label your seed with as much information as you can. All the seeds that we will be bringing to trade are packaged in paper envelopes. What was interesting to see over the years is people go for all the glossy packages and leave these behind. Often more interesting plants are found in these envelopes.
When you arrive at the seed swap you can drop off your seeds and you will receive a ticket for each package allowing you to return and trade the ticket for a new package of seeds. Some seeds may be limited due to availability. Some seeds may have less seed in a package than others. Often rarer seeds will be this way. An example of this would be an heirloom tomato that produces few seeds.

So save the date. We are now full for vendors but we are still in need of volunteers if you have a couple of hours to spare. For more info about this event contact us at therivercrest@gmail.com