2008 Catalog and Seed Sale

Come get your copy of our first ever print catalog!

Here at the Gardiner Library it feels like spring has sprung! Seeds, some in colorful packs, others in small jars and containers, have taken over the main table and are overflowing to adjacent bookshelves. The full-color Seed Saver’s Exchange packs really brighten up the stacks and the bulk seeds and seed for borrowing are reminiscent of an old-fashioned apothecary shop.

To see the full list of available seeds go to our new revamped website www.seedlibrary.org. Click through the pages of the site to see the exciting developments in store for 2009 including online ordering, online seed swap, and our vintage seed ephemera collection.

Don’t forget- in addition to free seeds, members get discounts on pre-packed seeds, seed saving workshops, and can receive free heirloom gardening advice. Membership is only $10 per year and we have enough free seeds to go around. Memberships support our not-for-profit seed saving work.

Our goal for 2008 is to sell out of everything from other seed companies so we can start fresh with our own locally grown seeds. February 4^th-8^th is our early-bird special for library patrons and anyone on our email list, like you! On February 9^th we will be at the Winter Sun Farm Market in New Paltz where hundreds of local folks have been flocking to buy local winter produce. For info and directions to the market visit www.wintersunfarms.com.

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