DUNEDIN SEED EXCHANGE

For the past few months we've been laying the ground work for a new seed exchange based here in Dunedin, through Otepoti Urban Organics. I'll run through the basics first then go into a bit more detail...

So far, we have managed to source over 50 varieties of heirloom and open pollinated vegetable varities that are suited to growing in Dunedin and more generally, the Coastal Otago / Southland bioregion. These will be avaliable very soon to any of you out there as well as the wider Dunedin public.

Thanks to a generous donation of $500 from Students for Environmental Action (funds raised from May's Organic Festival...cheers guys, big ups to all involved!), along with some other donations (mainly from my own bank account haha), we now have a fairly decent repository of these seeds, sitting here ready to be packaged up and distributed to Dunedin gardeners! I aim to have the first batch of seeds packaged up and ready to go by the start of September.

HEIRLOOM AND OPEN POLLINATED VEGETABLES
So...what are heirloom and open pollinated vegetable varieties? Open pollinated varieties are ones that have been pollinated with other plants of the same variety, which means that when seed is saved from them, the resulting plants will exhibit more or less the same features as the parents. By saving seed from only the strongest preforming plants of any given crop, you're not only keeping the strain healthy, but also gradually breeding it toward your own growing conditions. All 'heirloom' varities are open pollinated. They are simply the ones that have been around for a long time (over 60 years or so), often having been kept alive soley through amatuer seed savers and seed exchange networks.

These are different to 'hybrid' seeds, which are prevalent in many major seed companies catalogs. Hybrids are the result of a cross between two distinctly different strains of a species of vegetable. With hybrids, the 'F1' generation (first generation after the cross), usually exhibits fairly uniform plant types with good growth. However, if seed is saved from F1 hybrids, the plants of the F2 cross notoriously exhibit wildly varying growth habits which is not usually desirable for the home gardener.

Heirloom and open pollinated vegetable strains have been bred for decades, selecting for flavour, nutrition and natural disease resistance. Mainstream vegetable seeds have often been pulled from commercial lines and have been bred for bulk yeild and long shelf life, not to mention they have been bred alongside pesdicides for many years, thus gradually loosing their natural disease resistance.

NETWORKING AND DISTRIBUTION
There are several active seed savers groups around New Zealand and we are excited to be establishing a Dunedin 'node' of this wider network.

Our seed savers network will not only distribute the seeds of our selected strains, but also provide information on how to grow and save seed from these varieties. We encourage people to save their own seed to use the next year and share with friends, and also to donate seeds back to our network to keep our genetic database strong. People donating seeds back to the network will receive credits for a number of free seed packets of their choosing from our catalogue. Our seeds are distributed at a price of $1.00 per pack, and the seed savers network is run on a 100% not-for-profit basis. Any proceeds above cost for the seed bank will go into projects to further increase the effectiveness and strenghth of the seed bank, such as sourcing more strains, leasing land for breeding projects, and so on. I think it works out well...you get cheap, good quality seeds, and we get a donation to continue broadening and improving your supply of good cheap seeds!

Sooooooo...you're probably wondering what seeds we have and where you can get them? We are still finalising the details of if/where these seeds will be avaliable on a daily basis...and I'm also finalising a time and venue for our spring meeting / seed swap / official seed exchange 'launch'. So these details will come in another email soon, along with a full list of what varieties we have. In the mean time, if you're really needing some seeds, I'm happy to meet up with people to get seeds, once we've got them packaged up that is!

GETTING INVOLVED
Okay. Whew. I need to take a deep breath here! So much new stuff I'm getting quite excited.

Now you're probably also wondering how can you help be involved in the seed exchange? Well, the number one way you can help is to grow our strains, learn how to properly save the seed, and to donate seeds and information back to the network. It will be a learning process for all of us, and we will get to grow some amazing, delicious and nourishing food in the process.

You can also help by coming along to our quarterly seed swap meetings, sharing your experiences from the past season with other gardeners, being active on the website (contributing to the 'gardening guide' section, and asking and answering questions in the forums, etc.), and just generally treating your gardening as a great hobby that is both enjoyable and rewarding. That is the end goal here!

As far as in the short term setting up of the seed bank, theres a few things we need:
-Help with packaging up seeds into wee paper envelopes...labelling etc
-I was kind of hoping to think of a good name for the seed exchange...something a bit different to just 'seed exchange / seed bank' etc. so if any interesting or creative ideas pop into your head, let me know! But do it soon as I need to get things printed and so on. Don't be shy!
-Any ideas and input into how the whole thing could / should work

Okay well I could harp on about this for hours (and I pretty much already have) so I'll leave it there as far as seed exchange goes...if you have any questions, I'm happy to answer.