Gone to Seed

Anyone can learn to save seeds- it's a matter of knowing how to carefully observe the plants we grow doing what they do best- sprouting, reaching for the sky, flowering, fruiting, and striving to reproduce. Why we save seeds is a matter of personal choice, as specific as the vegetables we love, the herbs we savor, and the flowers we enjoy.

Seed saving is done to preserve cultural heritage, to keep alive a unique variety, to breed plants for individual traits, to be self-sufficient, to keep bio-tech corporations out of our gardens, and for pleasure. Whatever reason gardeners and farmers have, preserving plant diversity through saving seeds, especially plants suited to particular bioregions, is necessary in order for sustainable farms to survive and food sources to remain public property.

This Seed Library blog, in addition to being a forum for passing on the particulars of seed saving practices, will track seed related politics, news, and build a comprehensive list of seed saving organizations and responsible seed buying sources. Questions will be answered through posts and references to the best seed saving websites and books. If you have a personal seed saving story, please share it.

Winter is the time to dream of next season's garden- this year, dream of seed saving as well and grow a garden to share with the Seed Library.

This Seed Library blog is an offshoot of the Hudson Valley Seed Library. The library, located in Gardiner, NY, is a library within a library, organizing and disseminating a collection of seeds specific to New York State. The collection is being made available in the same way books are checked out and returned. The not-for-profit group provides seed saving workshops, gives talks to farm and garden groups, circulates library books on heirloom gardening and seed saving, and offers over 60 varieties of heirloom and open pollinated seeds for check-out, exchange, and sale to its members. The ultimate goal of the library is to become a template for how to create a publicly grown and owned seed collection of regional heirlooms.

Ken Greene
Hudson Valley Seed Library