Seedy Sunday - save your seeds now !!!

[Richard Loader]

The Fordingbridge group are planning a seed swap event to take place in February.
In fact it will be a chance to swap most anything related to growing; plants, seed spuds, Rhubarb roots, Jam, Pickle, etc. etc. It's intended to be accessible to anyone anywhere, not just Fordingbridgites

THE reason for posting this now is, that to have any seeds to swap you need to gather them about now. Tonight (Sept 11th) Gardeners World will be taking seed collection as a topic so it's worth watching to get some ideas. It will be on iPlayer later so you can get up to speed.

Posted after GW: not much about seed saving in that prog so please print yourself a copy of the instructions kindly produced by Realseeds.

Here's a Realseeds video:


Regard your seeds and plants as currency, the more you collect together the better off you will be in Feb at the seed swap event.

As well as a chance to save pennies and meet some like minded folks I see the event as chance to get the attention of keen gardeners who as yet haven't heard of Transition - if they come along they might want to get involved, we can hope.

The date and venue are yet to be fixed.

Cheers

Richard

[David Aylieff-sansom]

Hi Richard
We would be keen to come along as when we had a go at this earlier this year it fizzled it a bit or perhaps we could hold a regional one in our Learning Garden, what do you think?
David

[Richard Loader]

Hi David,

I think the key is planning - judging from the Brighton experience........that's not to say yours wasn't planned just that for us to succeed a lot of planning would be necessary. Perhaps the audience that we can get to through the Food challenge and other local societies might be different to the Fairweathers clientele - maybe.

I am keen to combine this with a potato event - I think that would increase its pulling power. How did your Potato event go?

[David Aylieff-sansom]

Hi Richard
The potatoe event did go well especially with the schools, they thoroughly enjoyed taking part. We will be running this again next year but again we need to get smarter, we need good notes on Potatoe varieties to include yield, flavour and texture with info not from text books but experience from people who grow them to eat.
The crop swap event is so important to be planned well, in retrospect our timings were off, you need to hit it when it is really fresh in peoples minds. Again private endorsements are the winner getting people to say why they grow certain varieties is the winner.
if we can help we would love to but if not we wish you well.
David

[Richard Loader]

Interesting what you say about personal experience - very Web 2.0 Perhaps this is a good place to gather some input on how people get on with different varieties.
This year we found Winston to be a great early variety for baking spuds
and once again Sarpo Mira fought off the blight and cropped brilliantly

First question is, could you get some Sarpo from T&M for the event?............can you order some Sarpo Blue Danube soon, before they sell out?

Yes, we must work together. As regards location we are looking for somewhere this side of the Forest 'cos us folks here don't travel to distant places like Beaulieu very often - there be dragons.....

I wonder could two events be synch'd (one on a sat the other the next day) so that seeds, plants etc, people could be moved from one to the other using the same info boards, guests etc etc............. and maybe share promo advertising.press releases.

There's an answer there some where.

WDYT?

PS. I am posting this in public so anyone else can chip in with great ideas

[David Aylieff-sansom]

I like the cut of your jib, The events could work being synch'd lets work on this.
I always forget the travelling issue, it must stem back to the days when saddling up the horse determined how far you could go before you had to get your oats ( for the horse that is) !
Sarpo Blue Danube, is elusive already not being listed for wholesale, we will try to tap up T&M also Phoenix to see how they could help growing the humble spud.
It would be good to see what varieties have done well this year perhaps we could use the forum to get some ideas, certainly the Sarpo's have performed well again but so did Charlotte as it matured well before the blight got a hold.

[Sue Loader]

Looking forward to it. Just a note that isnt mentioned on the real seeds instructions......Dont save seed from F1 varieties as they are cross bred and will not "come true" in the next generation.