It's Seed Season Again!
Seeds, already? Yes, it's that season again here at Seeds of Diversity.
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 2025 rush, and before long there will be another wave of seed catalogues to browse.
Got Seeds? Offer them in our Seed Exchange!
Our seed saver members share thousands of varieties of vegetable, fruit, flower, grain, and herb seeds every year. If you've saved seeds from your garden, whether just one easy flower, or dozens of incredible heritage vegetables, list them in our Seed Exchange. It's a great way to get involved in our community of seed savers, to meet other gardeners across Canada, and to encourage others to grow your favourite varieties too.
New to the Seed Exchange? Check the article below for an introduction to listing seeds and making the most of our Seed Exchange platform.
Annual Members Meeting November 23, 2024
Our Annual Members Meeting is coming up soon, and this year we're celebrating 40 years of Seeds of Diversity. Join other members for a trip down memory lane about our programs past and present, and ideas for the next 40 years!
3:00pm Eastern time : Forty Years of Seeds of Diversity!
3:45pm Eastern time : Members Annual General Meeting
Everyone is welcome! See the details here
Organic Vegetable Seed Production Course
Canadian Organic Growers (COG) is proud to offer this comprehensive, intermediate course focused on supporting a new generation of successful, commercial, organic seed producers in Canada. Access to organic, biodiverse, and locally adapted seeds is key to the success of the organic farming sector in Canada, yet organic seed availability remains limited.
Farmers across North America and Europe, surveyed in 2021 and 2022, identified a lack of training opportunities in seed production as a key barrier to strengthening the organic farming sector. This course helps address this gap in Canada by offering education on technical seed production as well as the development of a sound business plan in which seed production becomes part of a viable farming livelihood.
This course is designed and delivered in partnership with The Bauta Family Initiative on Canadian Seed Security (a program of SeedChange), with funding provided by the Continuing Education and Training Association of BC (CETABC).
https://cog.ca/courses-webinars/ovsp/
Calling All Fruit Growers!
Some of our members want to get serious about fruit conservation. Apples, pears, berries - fruit that grows well in Canada and varieties that are difficult to find, or need to be better promoted.
Would you like to meet other fruit enthusiasts? Get involved in perennial fruit conservation? If there's enough interest in a Canadian network of fruit growers and propagators, we can support one and connect you into it!
Let us know what interests you about this idea, and we'll get started this winter.
How to list seeds in the Member Seed Exchange
Do you have seeds that you'd like to share with other members in the annual Member Seed Exchange? Help make Seeds of Diversity the co-operative success that it has always been, by offering your seeds to other members!
Over the years, our Seed Exchange has helped thousands of Canadian gardeners share even more different varieties of flowers, vegetables, herbs, grains, and fruit, and we credit our members with rescuing many endangered seed varieties by finding, saving, and sharing them with other growers.
Building an Inter-School Seed Library
The Inter-School Seed Library is a more robust, more localized, more engaged version of what we’ve been doing when we offer seeds to schools. Instead of purchasing seeds from local seed companies, the majority will eventually be seeds grown and collected from the very school gardens they’re being distributed to. Much like a traditional seed library model, schools will “borrow” seeds, with an informal promise to set aside a section, or a few plants, to grow for seed.
From our youth blog: Giving the Gifts of Seeds
Food makes an excellent gift. Because it’s consumable, it doesn’t clutter up the receiver’s home, and, if you select your gift carefully, it can be a sustainable, low-waste option during a season that can be decidedly unfriendly towards the environment. Seeds have these same benefits! Think of them as food gifts with a bit of assembly required!
Seeds are, as Karen Lanier (n.d.) so eloquently said, “little packages of potential that can make lasting and meaningful gifts,” and, with a bit of care, they can be the highlight of anyone’s holiday season!
In this issue
How to list seeds in the Member Seed Exchange
Building an Inter-School Seed Library
From our youth blog: Giving the Gifts of Seeds
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