Get Ready for the Seed Season!
Already? The gardening season is just ending. But the seed season is just starting!
This is the time of year when we really get to work at Seeds of Diversity. Seeds are arriving in the mail from our seed growers, Seedy Saturday and Seedy Sunday organizers are already starting to plan their events, it's time to get our Member Seed Exchange in order for the 2024 rush, and before long there will be another wave of seed catalogues to browse.
Garlic Bulbils are Still Available
We have 48 varieties of garlic bulbils available for planting this fall. Bulbils - not the large bulbs that you're probably used to, but the tiny nuggets that grow in the scapes at the tops of the plants, are a very economical way to collect and grow a vast assortment of garlic varieties!
If you plant bulbils, be prepared to wait for two full years before harvesting fully-grown garlic, but the results should be better than clove-planted garlic, and growing from bulbils is a very economical way to scale up a diverse collection of varieties. Read our article to learn more: How to Grow Garlic From Bulbils
While supplies last, we will send you a good amount (at least 10) of bulbils for 5 different varieties for $15 including shipping and handling. Please order at seeds.ca/store.
We cannot guarantee specific varieties, but if you have a favourite, please ask and we'll do our best to provide what you want.
Annual Members Meeting November 25, 2023
3:00pm Eastern time : join other members to discuss Seeds of Diversity's programs and membership, and approve our annual reports. A zoom link will be included in a separate email for members.
Join our Board of Directors
At our Annual Meeting we will elect members to our Board of Directors. Do you love what Seeds of Diversity does and want to help make it even better? We're looking for people with skills and experience who can help strategize our work for the future. Meetings are monthly and virtual, typically no more than an hour. We're especially looking for people who have connections with the wider seed-saving community, experience in administration or governance of non-profit organizations, and availability for a one-hour virtual meeting each month.
If that sounds like you, send us an email expressing your interest and let us know
- Your background, skills, and experience with non-profits like Seeds of Diversity.
- What you feel you can offer as a board member.
- Any questions that you might have about our board, meeting style, or other roles within the organization.
Another Season of Seedy Saturdays & Sundays is Coming!
The first Seedy Saturday event took place in Vancouver in 1990. Since then, these incredible locally-run, grassroots events have spread and evolved across communities. Nowadays, there are estimated to be 170 events each year, or at least that’s where the number lay prior to the pandemic. Some have sadly disappeared in recent times, as funds run dry or organizers retire with no one to take the reins. At the same time, new events sprout up every year - already, five brand new events have developed for 2024, and the season is truly just beginning!
Seeds of Diversity has gratefully supported Seedy Saturdays and Seedy Sundays for quite some time now, and ramped up that support through COVID-19. It’s been so much fun, we don’t intend to stop anytime soon. Here’s a bit about what we have planned for the next few months:
Wrapping up a summer of youth leadership: the Youth Food Market
Our youth programming, Youth in Food Systems, has been gaining considerable momentum over the last few years. Our work with youth is really centred around the idea that young people need to understand our food systems and see viability in careers within sustainable food. After all, 40% of farmers are set to retire in the next ten years, and there are acute and chronic shortages of workers across the food sector. So how do we challenge societal, and especially youth, perceptions of the food system in order to energize intentional, thoughtful pursuit of sustainable food careers?
Breeding a Better Ground Cherry
In 2020 we introduced a new Community Seed Grow-out project with the aim to breed a better ground cherry. Ground cherries (Physalis pruinosa) are small golden-yellow berries with a pineapple-citrus flavour. They're easy to grow, but perhaps not as popular as they could be because even people who love them say that they're difficult and time-consuming to harvest. The problem is that the plants often lie flat on the ground making it difficult to pick, and even see, the berries. We thought we could improve on that.
In this issue
Another Season of Seedy Saturdays & Sundays is Coming!
Wrapping up a summer of youth leadership: the Youth Food Market
Breeding a Better Ground Cherry
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