Seeds from WinterSown
Feb 6, 2010 cheap, seed exchange, seed saving, seeds
I know many of your probably already know about WinterSown but for those of you that have not you must check them out. This is the first year I have requested seeds from them and I they completely blew away my expectations. By simply sending them an self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE) and an optional donation they will send back some seeds of your choosing. I have gotten tired of my boring tomatoes I have been growing from the limited selections at local nursery and garden center so I chose the following: Husky Red Cherry, Persey Tomato, Red Brandywine, New Yorker, Mini Gold, Green Zebra, Tommy Toes, and they also sent me some Parsley which was not on my list though I was planning on growing this year.
They also included a pamphlet providing a long but not very labor intensive method of how to save your own tomato seeds which was yet another added bonus. I will be sure to save some seeds and send many of my extras back their way at the end of the season.
Tags: cheap, garden seeds, tomato plants, vegetables
CVG First Annual Virtual Seed Swap Jan 30th (UPDATE Today)
Jan 30, 2010 seed exchange, seed saving, seeds
In celebration of spring coming up and national seed swap day on January 30th (falls on last Saturday of January) I have setup a few tools on the site to hopefully assist with getting some new varieties of seeds this years without using a credit card.
Seed Exchange Forum, this is a forum setup as a location to let people know what seeds you have to trade and/or what seeds you are hunting for. Once you find an interested party you can use the private messaging feature to share contact information without any worries of spammer picking up your email or address.
Seed Exchange Chat Room, sometimes a trade cab result in a large number of back and forth questions for this I have setup the chat room where you can discuss your questions/concerns in real time. This is also a great resource to meet up with multiple parties and possible setup a larger trade with less shipping costs. Here is a simple example of how this may unfold:
| Person | Wants | Has |
| Bill | Peas | Cilantro |
| Joe | Cilantro | Lettuce |
| Tim | Lettuce | Peas |
As you can see above a single trade could not make everyone happy but adding an additional person there can be a three way trade where everyone gets what they are looking for. This is a simple example but imagine many more seeds and many more people and you can see for a couple of mailing you could have a lot of seeds coming your way.
For anyone who has not traded/swapped seeds before I created a quick seeding trading FAQ of some of the common situations that should answer most of your questions.
I know there are many real physical seed swaps going occurring on Jan 30th but I would like to setup a virtual one at 7:00-9:00PM (Pacific time) in the CVG seed exchange chat room though I do understand that we have many visitors in various time zones around the world so please leave a comment if there are some other times that may work better, or possible have separate meet up times for US and UK.
Even though the official seed swap day is a week away feel free to check the forum and chat room to make some trades before then, I am definitely up for some more trades.
Tags: cheap, cilantro, garden seeds, vegetables
