Tag Archives: seed swaps

Seed swap 2017

26 Thursday Jan 2017

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homesavedseed

I do like a good seed swap.

It’s a simple idea: you take your spares along to your local village hall, or wherever the swap is taking place, and offload them to someone who can make better use of them than you can.

Then you browse around what everyone else has brought and take your pick. Everyone’s a winner.

Seed swaps started in Brighton, where the biggest, Seedy Sunday, still takes place: this year’s is on 5th February so if you’re in the area, do pop in.

But the idea has caught on, and now seed swaps are held all over the country. You’ll have to Google your local venue – there used to be a listings page on the Seedy Sunday website but it doesn’t seem to be active these days – but they’re not difficult to find.

Or, of course, you can just stay right here. Because I have been clearing out my seed boxes in a fit of efficiency and have set aside an exceptionally large pile of seeds which I know I’m not going to get around to sowing this year.

Last time I did this we had a few Royal Mail related issues with the SAE system, so I’ve changed the way things work a little. Most importantly, I’ve decided that instead of asking everyone to pay postage, I will instead ask you to donate the money to the Greenfingers charity, which in case you haven’t heard of it plants gardens for children and their families spending time in hospices all around the country.

So as long as I get the email with your address you should get your seeds in the post asap with no hitches!

Please follow the instructions carefully:

  1. Choose your seeds from the list below: maximum 10 packets per person please.
  2. Post in the comments section so I know who wants what and can update the list so everyone else knows what is left. This is first come first served, so read earlier comments to make sure your seeds haven’t been bagged already.
  3. Visit my JustGiving page and make a donation of at least £1.
  4. Email me your address with your full name (so I can match you with your JustGiving donation) and what you’ve ordered to sally(dot)nex(at)btinternet(dot)com so I can send you your seeds!

Here’s the list:

(seeds are no more than 2 years old; *=opened packet, but still with a good quantity of seeds in it; **=home-saved seeds so can’t guarantee germination, though all seeds have been kept in cool dry conditions)

Artichoke ‘Purple and Green’ x 2 packs
*Artichoke ‘Purple de Provence’
Aubergine ‘Black Beauty’ x 2 packs
Begonia ‘Bada Bing Pretty Mix’
Beetroot ‘Boldor’ (yellow)
**Borlotti bean ‘Firetongue’
Broccoli raab ’60 Days’
Cabbages – mixed pack of three, Sir, Attraction and Minicole
Cabbage ‘Golden Acre’
Cabbage ‘Gunma’
Calabrese ‘Ironman’
Calabrese ‘Sibsey’
Campanula carpatica ‘Blue’
Cauliflower ‘All the Year Round’
Celery ‘Giant Red’
*Chickpea ‘Principe’
Courgette ‘Black Forest’
*Cucamelon
Cucumber ‘White Wonder
Gherkin ‘Diamant’
Green manure Caliente Mustard
*Hibiscus ‘Simply Love’
*Ipomoea pennata
Kale Duo Mix – ‘Emerald Ice’ & ‘Midnight Sun’
Leaf salad ‘Spicy Oriental Mix’
Leek ‘Bulgaarse Reuzen – Lincoln’
Leek ‘Elefant’
*Leek – mixed varieties, on a seed tape
Mint (small packet)
Mustard (white) ‘Tilney’
Onion ‘Ailsa Craig’
Pea ‘Magnum Bonum’
Pea ‘Maro’ (marrowfat, for mushy peas)
Pepper (sweet) ‘Boneta’
Pepper (sweet) ‘Mini Bell Mixed’
Pepper (sweet) ‘Mixed’
Radish ‘Mooli Mino Early’
Runner bean ‘Prizewinner’
Sorrel ‘Red Veined’
Spinach ‘Samish’
*Spring onion ‘White Lisbon Winter Hardy’
Sweetcorn ‘Amaize’
Tagetes (French marigold) ‘Alumia Vanilla Cream’
Tomato ‘Apero’
Tomato ‘Montello’ (bush)
Tomato ‘Red Cherry’ x 2 packs
Tomato ‘Red Pear’
Tomato ‘Super Sweet 100’
Tomato ‘Sweet Aperitif’ x 2 packs
Tomato ‘Tigerella’
Viola ‘Bunny Ears’
Viola tricolor ‘Bowles Black’
Watercress ‘Aqua’

I will update this page daily as this gets under way, and the swap will run for as long as it takes for all the seeds to go, or for everyone to get a bit bored – whichever comes the sooner! Enjoy 😀

Of seed bombs and mushrooms

23 Saturday Feb 2013

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I got a lovely little parcel in the post the other day.

seedswap

I do love a good seed swap. This is the second year I’ve been taking part in this one: it’s run by the lovely Carl Legge, who lives in an obscure bit of Wales I’d only happened to have heard of because a breed of sheep is named after it (obscure bits of Wales are always heartbreakingly beautiful so that’s a good thing).

The idea of Seedy Penpals is pretty straightforward: you put your name down, you’re paired with another equally seed-obsessed gardener, and then given a (different) swapee – someone to send your own spare seeds to.

And this is the result. I don’t know what it is with beautiful packaging this year but everyone’s into it. I got the most beautiful packet of sweetpea seeds earlier this year from the wonderful Ursula over at Easton Walled Gardens. Well, I say packet: it was actually a very stylish flat tin, of the matt silver cigar sort, and inside the packets of sweetpeas were laid lovingly in a beautifully-folded piece of brown paper. It all looked so perfect I could hardly bear to break the seal and sow the seeds (though I got over that and they’re now in the altogether more prosaic surroundings of a load of old loo rolls full of compost in the greenhouse, soon, I hope, to germinate).

And my wonderful Seedy Penpal, Cally of Countrygate Gardens in Wiltshire (and a lady after my own heart: she has done a lot of what I one day dream of doing) clearly has an eye for a good ribbon, too. She’s taken such trouble to bind up my seeds so beautifully: it gives a pile of seed packets the delicious anticipation of a birthday present.

seedswap2

I particularly loved the bee mix seedballs – you can buy them from Cally (hunt down her phone number on the above website). Full of foxgoves, viper’s bugloss, wild marjoram, red clover and birdsfoot trefoil they might have been designed for my chalky soil. And they came wrapped in an artless square of hessian tied in string: it’s the little touches that make all the difference, you see.

seedswap3

Inside were – quite literally – seedballs. I’m very intrigued to find out if these work: the seeds inside are apparently mixed with clay, compost and chilli powder (to deter pests) and made into a little pellet about the size of an aniseed ball. I think you’re meant to sow the whole thing. It says to scatter them on the ground, but each pellet contains thousands of seeds… well. It’s not gardening as I know it: but I’m willing to give it a try. I shall report back.

seedswap4

And what were the other goodies in my little bundle of fun? Well: ‘Cosmic Purple’ carrot, which I’ve wanted to grow for ages (it’s one of the original heirloom purple carrots, though I think the ‘Cosmic’ bit probably came later); white and blue love-in-a-mist; some scallop summer squash (yay!), cleome, calendula, molucella and gypsophila; orange-scented thyme to add to my collection; some melons; and – get this – mushrooms! And it says all you need is horse manure. I’ve got loads, and loads, and loads of that thanks to my two little ponies, so I’m away. It sounds like a bit of a faff to get it started, but if home-grown chestnut mushrooms are the result, I’m game.

Thank you, Cally: you’ve sown the seeds (pun intended) for a wonderful season to come. And thanks also to Carl, for putting in the considerable work involved in setting up the swap in the first place. See you next year!

Snowy day activities

18 Friday Jan 2013

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winter_seeds

Fennel seedheads in snow

It’s snowing.

There are few types of weather which really make gardening impossible. Even when we woke up to a hard frost the other day I was out turning my compost. But this – when it’s six inches and more falling all the time – this is indoor gardening weather.

So today’s housebound horticulture was my annual seed packet clearout.

This is a slightly tedious but nonetheless very necessary part of the beginning of my seed-sowing year. I collect dozens of seed packets over the average gardening season: some given to me by nice PR people, some I buy either for gardening projects I’m working on, or just for fun; others I acquire at seed swaps or in impulse buys at garden shows.

Most of them are opened, which is reassuring. But I tend to sow them and then stuff them back into my seed boxes in a hurry, so that by the end of the year they’re bulging with last year’s seeds, this year’s seeds and who knows what in between.

seeds_packets

The pile of jettisoned out of date packets grows…

So here’s my seed-sowing survival strategy, followed every year to make sure I’m not drowning in unwanted seedlings by June:

  • jettison the old stuff: I really can’t be bothered to sow seeds when only half will germinate anyway, and that’s what happens when you sow old seed. So I chuck out any packets over two years old, plus anything that says ‘carrot’ or ‘parsnip’ on it as these are no good after just one year.
  • weed out the doubles: in 2012 I somehow ended up with three packets of ‘Gardeners’ Delight’ tomatoes. I didn’t even grow any ‘Gardeners’ Delight’ tomatoes. These go on my ‘seed swaps’ pile – unopened seeds I can give away in exchange for something more interesting instead.
  • do a reality check: I team up my now beautifully slimmed-down seed boxes with my veg-planting plan for this year, and make sure I’m only sowing what I have room for. I have thrown too many surplus seedlings on the compost heap to ever want to do it again and have learned a steely discipline on this one.
  • make some hard choices: I want some courgettes to go in the patch by the gate: I have four different courgette varieties in my seed box (round ‘Tondo di Piacenza’, yellow striped ‘Sunstripe’, green striped ‘Safari’ and climbing ‘Black Forest’, since you ask). At least two of them have to go. Apart from not liking yellow courgettes (that was easy) – I have no idea which to choose. Anyone want to make the decision for me?

And finally…

  • make a shopping list: this starts ‘parsnips and carrots’ and goes on to fill in the gaps. All my calabrese was out of date this year, and I could do with some white Swiss chard. And then I get more seeds to stuff my seed boxes with and…

I think I may take up stamp collecting instead.

The seeds of change

14 Tuesday Feb 2012

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A humble potato day in a little village hall in the middle of nowhere (pace the residents of Castle Cary) in Somerset might seem an unlikely setting for the beginnings of a revolution.

But as I walked around picking out this year’s little bundles of treasure, it occurred to me that everybody in that room was uncomplicatedly and happily going about the task of undermining the establishment – those people who tell you what you can and can’t grow, what varieties of potato you’re ‘allowed’ to buy.

They were doing so with a smile on their faces: peacefully, yet astonishingly effectively. You could see it from the sparkles in their eyes, the excitement as they dithered over ‘Mr Little’s Yetholm Gypsy’ or ‘Vitelotte’ and riffled through the paper seed packets or scooped up a generous mugful of shallot sets. It was the excitement of the person who knows they’re in on something – and that it’s really, really good.

Of course, it’s partly just the joy of gardening: there are few occupations which bring on outbreaks of unadulterated cheeriness in quite the same way.

But I think there’s something else going on here. You see, I’ve seen those expressions before, at seed swaps, on the face of the lady I spoke to about Transition Town Totnes, in the eyes of the rapt audience watching a beekeeper go about his work at an allotment open day in Brighton.

Quiet revolutionaries?

It’s a quiet revolution: one where people just get on with it. They don’t march on Westminster: they don’t even particularly want to take on the world. I’m not sure they even realise they’re revolting.

But what they’re doing is, undeniably, sticking two fingers up at the status quo, at the vested interests, at the government diktats: rejecting all that, and going their own way.

So far it’s also a minority, though a growing one. It’s noticeably middle-class in its concerns and interests, but I don’t see why that makes it any less valid. I find its various manifestations incredibly inspiring, well beyond the initial rather woolly and slightly irrelevant impression they might give at first.

In fact, they couldn’t be more relevant. They give me hope for the future.

Here’s how you, too, can join the revolution:

Potato Days (Jan-March): now happening at a village hall near you. A wonderful opportunity to join other like-minded people in rifling through tubers with unlikely names, eat a great deal of cake and – if you go to one of the larger ones – find out a fair bit about local heritage and gardening. I have no idea how it works to cement a community: but it does.

It is – like all the best revolutions – fuelled on
copious quantities of cake

Seedy Sundays (mostly February): more openly alternative: you’re as likely to come across a local renewable energy cooperative or someone trying to persuade you that building houses out of tyres is the next big thing (actually, it is kind of cool). And the overall concept is definitely more ‘hippy’ – you bring a few seeds you’ve saved from home, you take home as many as you want in return, nobody’s counting, nobody’s watching, they just trust you to join in the spirit of the thing. But because it’s based on trust, it works: and it restores your faith in human nature, which is surely what community is all about.

National Beanpole Week (April): if forests (or at least, woodlands) are your thing, you can get down with the woodsmen at coppicing events around the country. Those who manage the coppiced woodlands in our countryside are often a hidden community: this is the week they come out of the woods and join in with everyone else. Events are community affairs, with demonstrations of traditional crafts, and an encouragement for gardeners to use more locally-sourced, sustainable coppicing products in what they do.

National Allotment Week (August): find out what your local allotments are doing and get to know what a strong community you can forge by just exchanging tips over the plot fence. Many are much more than just a load of people growing veg: Moulsecoomb, in Brighton, have started a forest garden which provides gardening therapy to some of the most disadvantaged kids in the area. They keep bees, too.

and if you’re serious about your revolutionary tendencies:

Community Supported Agriculture: farms run cooperatively by local communities. Now embraced by the National Trust, until recently firmly establishment but becoming more and more revolutionary by the day. They’re running four CSA farms, notably the MyFarm setup at their Wimpole Estate in Cambridgeshire – so democratic that members vote on what to grow and how to raise the animals.

TheTransition Town movement is sweeping the country, having migrated here, like the CSA movement, from across the Atlantic. The most established is Totnes, not a million miles from here (where they grow lettuces for amenity planting) and it’s spreading to dozens of towns from Brighton to Melrose in the Scottish Borders.

It covers so much more than gardening, although growing things is the fuel behind the whole scheme: the thinking is that the entire town becomes self-sufficient, disengaging itself from globalisation and the wider nation and producing its own food, its own energy, its own support systems. It therefore – the thinking is – becomes more resilient, less at the mercy of a whim-led government.

If you follow that to its logical conclusion, soon we won’t need governments at all. Now there’s a revolutionary thought: it might just be that the seeds of change are to be found in our gardens.

The Big Seed Giveaway

20 Friday Jan 2012

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Anyone want some seeds?

One of my new resolutions for this year is to get stricter with the number of seeds I sow. No – really. I will.

(At this point, probably best not to mention the fat envelope full of little packets of RHS seeds I found while clearing out which are just so mouthwateringly gorgeous I can’t bear to let them go).

The thing is that every March I pull out the old floppy disc* box I use for keeping my seed packets in, and rifle through the section labelled – rather conventionally – ‘March’.

This is where I stuff all the packets of seed I acquire during the year, just as somewhere to put them, really. Result: far too many seeds. And I mean far too many: this year I counted around 60 packets I know for sure I will not have time, space or if I’m honest inclination to grow.

No point in keeping all these spare seed packets: but what to do? They’re all within date – some with ‘sow-by’ dates this year but most longer than that – and it seems such a waste just to chuck them out. Nearly all are pristine and unopened: some have lost their outer packets and therefore instructions, but I still know (because I’ve written it on the inner foil packets) the variety and sow-by date.

My usual fallback is to offload them at a seed swap, but I’m not planning to go to one this year: last year’s was great but it was a bit of a hike, being in Wiltshire, and I haven’t found one near enough to go to around here (yet). And besides, I’ve already got quite enough seed to sow to be getting on with for this year and – see resolution above – I really, honestly, truthfully don’t need any more.

So I thought I’d just… well… give them away, in my own sort of seed swap without the swap bit.

Therefore, I hereby announce, in its inaugural year of what I suspect may become an annual event…

The CG Big Seed Giveaway for 2012
(rules (not many, I hope) follow the list)

Flowers:
(I’m having to be a bit coy about the exact varieties in some cases, so where I’ve only listed the name + colour, email me if you want the full details (see below))

Poppy (Papaver laciniatum) (pink) (2 packets available) – both taken
Hollyhock (two-tone mix) – taken
Godetia (pink) – taken
Foxglove (pink)
Foxglove (white with purple dots) – taken
Foxglove (compact, pink) – taken
Calendula (single, yellow)
Coreopsis grandiflora – taken
Antirrhinum dwarf mix
Phlox (mauve mix) – taken
Zinnia (striped mix) – taken
Californian poppy (double, mix) – taken
Salpiglossis (wine-red)
Cornflower (pink & white mix) – taken
Petunia (pink and white mix) – taken
Wildflower mix (for bees) – taken
Gaillardia (butter yellow) – taken

Vegetables:
Courgette (yellow variety) (2 packets available) – both taken
Chilli pepper ‘Hot Cayenne’ – taken
Chilli pepper (medium hot, red) – taken
Brussels sprout ‘Evesham Special’ – taken
Carrot (yellow variety) – taken
Carrot (white variety) – taken
Cabbage (green coleslaw type, autumn/winter variety) – taken
Cauliflower ‘Aalsmeer’ – taken
Tomato ‘Moneymaker’ – taken
Tomato (patio variety, cherry) – taken
Onion ‘Long Red Florence’ – taken
Onion ‘Ailsa Craig’ – taken

Seeds saved by me (NB I am a little erratic on the seed-saving side so viability can’t be guaranteed, though it’s quite likely: all the following are heritage varieties)

Martock beans (9 packets) – 3 taken
Squash ‘Potimarron’ (9 packets) – 6 taken
Climbing French bean ‘George’s’ (9 packets) – 4 taken

Opened packets (still with plenty of seed in):
Cabbage ‘Ruby Ball’ – taken
Beetroot ‘Chioggia’ – taken
Bronze fennel – taken
Artichoke ‘Purple Globe’ – taken
Runner beans (no variety given as this was a seed swap acquisition) – taken

How to claim your free seeds:
– comment below giving the names of the seeds you want (if you have any questions about how this works, do just ask. Ditto re more information on any of the named varieties above – most of those named can be found on the interweb if you google)
– then send an email to sally dot nex at btinternet dot com confirming your request
– I’ll send you an email back giving you my address
– send an SAE to me and I’ll put the seeds in the envelope and post it back to you
– I’ll update this post regularly giving details of what’s gone and what’s left
– the giveaway will last for a week, until 27 January: since this post will go wandering off down the blog, follow me on Twitter (@sallynex) for updates
– if you enjoy growing your seeds, please blog about them later in the year if you can!

Rules:
– no more than 10 packets of seed and no more than one packet of the same variety per person.
– after the week is up, I’ll divvy up the remainder between those who have said they want more than 10 packets, so do indicate if you’d like to be part of this.
– first to place their order in the comments below gets the seed
– sorry but the offer is only open to UK respondents, otherwise I’ll get clobbered by customs and those nice people who try to stop nasty diseases crossing borders on the backs of foreign seeds

*remember floppy discs? Mine were 3 1/2″ and made a whirring noise when you put them in the computer: they seemed the ultimate in hi-techery at the time. The only thing I couldn’t quite work out was why they were called floppy when they were so… well… un-floppy. All in all it was quite a relief when CDs and memory sticks came along and relieved me of having to think about it any more.

Hey, look at my stash!

04 Tuesday Jan 2011

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Now of all my Christmas presents, the ones which most fired up my imagination were the series of intriguing little packets which dropped through my door one by one in the week or so leading up to the Big Day.

These are the contents of my Seedy Stocking Stuffers: a wizard wheeze dreamt up by Emma and taken up with enthusiasm by fellow veg-growing addicts Andy, Charlotte, Liz and Ali, as well as myself.

I did find myself rather humbled by the result: I save a little seed, but not that much, and blithely signed up before realising that actually, the contents of my seed packet shoebox weren’t quite as inspiring as they ought to be.

I did manage to send out some rather lovely beans I saved: blue (‘Kew Blue’), purple (‘Cosse Violette’) and brown (‘Coco’)as well as bog-standard green. But mostly, I didn’t come anywhere close to the delights I received in the post: so here’s a public thank you to all those who have given me the chance to try so many plants I’ve been wanting to grow for ages, and a sorry for fobbing you off with less interesting fare.

So from my box of treasures, here are the ones I shall most look forward to growing this year:

For my herb garden, I have some orach ‘Magenta Magic’ from Ali and some red and green perilla from Charlotte: the large French sorrel (also from Charlotte) should cope (and indeed spread like mad) on the shady side of the herb patch and look suitably handsome, too.

My tropical edibles garden has suddenly taken shape in a way it was struggling to do before: I can’t wait to get my Achocha ‘Fat Baby’ in the ground (thanks Ali and Charlotte, again) and – yay!! – at last I have some oca tubers to sow (thank you Emma!) though I have to somehow prevent them rotting off before I get them in the ground. I may just plonk them in a pot in the (heated) greenhouse for now as otherwise I think they’ll all be goners. Plus the giant sunflowers are making a comeback: I now have a pack of ‘Russian Giant’ from Liz. Tape measures at the ready!

And for the veg garden: can’t wait to sow the 5ft high climbing pea ‘Telephone’ – Liz and Ali, and possibly another candidate for the tape measure – and my tomato needs are very nearly taken care of too, what with the plum tomato ‘Scatolone’ (Liz), good old ‘Gardeners’ Delight’ (Andy) and ‘Sweet Pea Currant’ (Charlotte): tiny, delicious, and worth growing just for the name.

Of those plants I’ve never even thought about growing, I shall watch the ‘Potimarron’ squash (Ali) with fascination as it gallops around my plot; Italian capers (Emma) are a new one on me and I have no idea what to expect; and sea beet (Emma) I’m pretty sure I’ve picked wild on the seashore in my youth but never actually tried to grow.

Well who would have thought it. It’s still only January and I have a list as long as my arm of delicious things to fill my garden. I have a feeling it’s going to be a good year!