Category: Seed Saving

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What Will You Grow? Find New Treasures at the Seed Swap!

It’s always exciting to try new edible crops in the garden. Not only do you keep things fresh, which is a great goal for life as well as the kitchen, but a bit of a challenge can turn into a delightful achievement.

So why not try a new variety at the Great Seattle Seed Swap?

Browse the tables under signs for crop categories like Salad Greens, Tomatoes or Brassicas (and find out what Brassicas are-it’s OK if you don’t know). Ask another swapper what they’ve tried. Look up a variety in the stack of catalogs on a nearby table. Then just shake a few seeds into a packet, label it, and take home your treasure.

The goal of the King County Seed Lending Library is to celebrate seed. Sending you home with a new variety that may surprise you when it pops up out of the soil is the best way.

What seeds will be at the Swap?

The lending library has a supply of seeds donated by gardeners and seed companies that range from salad greens to squashes.

Some people will come to the swap with their extra seed packets or home-saved seeds (it’s not required but encouraged, just like masking!). And every year a couple of seed companies send us donations of seed to share.

This year we will enjoy selections from our friends at Adaptive Seeds in Bellingham and High Mowing Organic Seeds in Vermont. Seed from two wonderful corners of the country!

We can’t list all the types of crops and varieties that will be on the tables, but that’s part of the fun. Come and find out!

Thank you Adaptive Seeds for this cheery delivery!
Bundles of High Mowing seeds wait to be discovered.

What else happens at the Swap?

Glad you asked! Some fantastic greening organizations and community partners will join us with tables of their own. Get your gardening questions answered, learn about growing fruit in your yard, and find out how to borrow tools from a community tool library!

These great groups will be on hand:

If you want a bit of education with your seeds, we will also hold a short talk on the basics of seed saving.

The Great Seattle Seed Swap is Saturday, April 1, 2-4 p.m., at the Phinney Neighborhood Center, 6532 Phinney Ave. N., in the Community Hall of the Brick Building. See our Facebook event.

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Join us at the Seed Swap!

Interesting lettuce? New tomato? Sunflowers for solidarity with Ukraine? Join the Seed Library for the return of our Great Seattle Seed Swap! It’s our first since 2019, and we can’t wait to share seeds with you.

The swap will be Saturday, April 16, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Phinney Neighborhood Center, 6532 Phinney Ave. N., in the Community Hall of the Brick Building.

Recent donations from the Organic Seed Alliance of their “Teddybear Sunflowers” and from High Mowing seeds will provide new choices for seed-swappers to try this year.
OSA’s Semi-Teddybear Mix. Photo by Bill Thorness.

See our Facebook event and let us know you’re coming!

Do you have seeds to share? Here’s a guide to our preferences for seed-sharing:

  • Share only seeds of edible plants that your fellow gardeners would grow from seed, such as annual vegetables, herbs and edible flowers.
  • If donating packaged seed, it should be organic or open-pollinated, plant types that will produce seed true to the stated variety. Heirlooms are by definition open-pollinated.
  • If donating home-saved seed, please winnow and clean it off the stems or stalks as much as possible and bring only the seed.
  • If you can’t clean it in advance, plan to spend some time cleaning it the swap. We will have screens and buckets available.
  • All shared seed should be fresh, within three years of purchase or saving.
  • Label all seed donations with seed type, variety if known, and year it was grown/saved.
  • Bring envelopes and a pen to store and label your new seeds.

Look forward to seeing you in person soon!

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Winding Down a Quiet Year

Hi friends of the Seed Library! Our quiet gardening season is now at an end. The seeds have been retired to their winter home in a cool, dark back room.

It’s been a tough year to share seeds, with fewer open hours and no chances to get together. We hope that next year will see some return to normalcy. May the autumn bring you peace.

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2021 Update: No Swaps, but Seeds Available

Hello gardeners and seed-swapping friends. We have a happy/sad message for our community.

The sad news is that we won’t be holding any seed swaps this year due to the coronavirus. That is probably not a surprise to most of you.

The happy news is that seeds are available in two of our locations, and more locations may reopen in the near future.

Borrow Seeds in NE, NW Seattle

Two KCSLL branches are resuming seed sharing in their respective locations. Both the NE Seattle branch and the NW Seattle branch are located in their community tool libraries, which are now reopened with limited hours.

— The NE Seattle branch is open Tuesdays and Thursdays 5-8 pm and Saturday 9 am-noon.

— The NW Seattle branch is open Saturdays 9 am-1 pm. 

— Both branches are limiting the number of simultaneous visitors and requiring coronavirus precautions such as wearing a mask and observing a 6-foot social distancing rule.

Due to limited display space, the NW Seattle branch is only offering seeds of crops that can be sown now. Seeds of warm-weather crops like tomatoes, peppers, beans and squash will be made available in early spring.

Donate Seeds

Seeds can also be donated at these two locations, but please observe these guidelines: pre-clean any homegrown seed, put it in a compact package, and label it with the crop, variety name, and year saved. Partial seed packets may be donated as well; please tape them shut.

Thanks to Territorial Seed Company for sending this lovely donation last fall. Look for their colorful packets of 2019 seed in our offerings this year.

Please continue to watch this blog and our Facebook page for updates on seed availability at other locations or expanded hours. Current location hours and a link to spreadsheets of available seeds at these two branches are available on our Locations page.

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Filling Orders Virtually

NOTE: This post is from 2020; seed orders are not being filled in this manner in 2021.

We are delighted that we’ve found a way to share seeds during this difficult time. In our first week, we have served several dozen gardeners, from a third-grader to a neighbor group. Our seed supply is getting short on some items, but we are happy to get the seeds into peoples’ gardens while it is still relatively fresh and viable. Thank you for your patience as our intrepid volunteers fit this task into their full lives. Shout out to Polly for all her help!

Here are a few images of the process at the NW Seattle branch, starting from cataloging the seeds to filling and packaging up the orders.

Cataloging seeds
Filling seed orders
Seed orders bagged and labeled