by Lori Austin
Last year I talked about starting a seed library of beneficial plants for pollinators and birds. As Covid-19 may be here for a while, I think a seed circle might work better for the time being.
The focus of the seed-saving is to help preserve the diversity of plants that benefit wildlife, specifically birds, bees and butterflies. Plants and commercial seeds from nurseries are often hybrids and may not provide the same quality of pollen or reproduce an identical offspring. Our seeds would be collected from locally grown plants which may be better adapted for our climate conditions.
Each person in the seed circle could provide one or more types of seeds for others. Seeds could be collected throughout the season, dried and stored in airtight containers such as glass jars. Before doing a seed exchange, everyone could divide their seeds into small amounts to put into envelopes labelled with the type of seed, year collected, and the collector’s name. This information along with growing tips could also be put in a data base which we could share online. We would meet in the fall (outdoors) to exchange seed envelopes. If we had an abundance of seed, that would help start our seed library.
Please contact me through BurkeMtnNats@gmail.com if you are interested in joining the seed circle. More information will be shared over the summer by email or Zoom. We hope you will consider joining our project and sharing your garden seeds with us!