The Seedy Sisters are pleased to present the annual Totnes Seed Swap at Birdwood House Totnes on February 15th from 11 am to 3pm. This is the 8th Seed Swap that we have held and it is always a great occasion full of excited gardeners all swapping tips and experiences. Please bring along any surplus seeds that you may have to Birdwood House and swap them for different varieties. We are always delighted to receive home grown contributions from people. It is helpful if the seeds are labelled with the name of the variety and the date harvested.
No seeds? No worries! If you don't have any seeds to swap don't fret just turn up and you can make a small donation for some of the seeds given by the various seed companies that are generous enough to support us including the Heritage Seed Library at Garden Organic, Tuckers our local seed merchants, Tamar Organics seeds of Italy and Thompson and Morgan. The Seedy Sisters are all keen seed savers and we are happy to share our bounty with you.
We very much encourage people to save their own seed and pass on any surplus toothers. Locally grown and saved seed produces plants that are ideally suited to our local conditions. We are hoping to get The Dart Valley seed Bank off the ground this year and provide a community resource of locally harvested seed especially adapted to our local conditions. We are pleased this year to have joined forces with The Totnes Squash Co op and have limited supplies of an unusual orange Crown Prince squash bred by them.If you are interested in giving this a go please speak to one of the Seedies who can provide background information and basic botany advice!
Saving seed encourages bio-diversity and preserves varieties that may otherwise be lost. Over 90% of all varieties of vegetables have been lost to us in recent years as seed companies sell relatively few varieties and those few may have been chosen for characteristics that are not wanted by individual gardeners such as ability to travel well, shelf life and uniformity. Much of what remains of seed production is in the hands of a very few multi national corporations such as Dow, Syngenta and Monsanto. A lot of the seeds we have are not available for sale due to EU restrictions on registering seeds for sale. The only way these seeds can be preserved is by growing them and sharing the seeds at seed Swaps.
What we are looking for is taste! We love tasty home grown veg! And we love flowers! In fact we love to grow things and share the seedy love with you! Please help preserve bio-diversity and come along, meet your friends, make new friends and have some delicious soup and cake. There will be the ever popular Gardeners Question Time in the afternoon to thrash out gardening problems and all the Seedy Sisters will be on hand to give advice about saving seed and growing plants. We have our very own compost and botany experts on hand to give advice.
This year we will also be offering many different varities of organic seed potatoes and a Seedy Sister recently returned from Cuba will give a talk on the intensive urban permaculture gardens in Cuba and their role in reversing food poverty following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the resulting food shortages. We can all learn from Cuba's efforts to achieve food security using waste pieces of land in cities.
We would be extremely grateful for any volunteers to help make this a great event.
Please more information please contact Alison on 732128 or email alisonwilliams@fsmail.net. More on the Seedy Sisters here!
Just £1 entry!
Transition Town Totnes 