First Seed Swap

Last Monday I went to my first ever Seed Swap at the Peveril of the Peak pub in central Manchester.

It had been arranged by the 'Big Dig' organisation, and I had arranged to meet Diane from my allotment there.

The weather on the night itself was really windy with gusts of up to 60mph and driving rain, so not pleasant at all.  I wasn't hopeful of a big turnout with the consequence of fewer seeds to swap.

On Sunday night I had spent an absolute age sorting through my spare seeds and re-packaging them into smaller quantities that would be of use to a gardener rather than having to deal with 1000 or so seeds in a standard packet.

I got to the venue slighly before the published start date to find that there were only two other people there, one of which was Diane.  It seemed that the weather had either delayed or put other people off, but fortunately several other hardy souls started arriving soon after.

The way the seed swap worked was that there were several tables set out for the seeds, split between brassicas, legumes, greenhouse stuff (like peppers, tomatoes, etc), salad crops, herbs, flowers and others.

On arrival you simply dropped the packets you had brought with you on the appropriate table, and were free to rummage through the seeds brought by everyone else.  There was no limit to how many packets you could take.

I took several packs of French Breakfast radish, butternut squash, parsnip, carrot, some salad leaves and a few peas.

I came away with Sonesta French Beans, , Purple Queen French Beans, Broad Beans, Mr Fearns and Mr Fortune Beans, Romanseco Broccoli, Tomatoes - Green Zebra and Green Sausage, Baby Bear Pumpkin, Paris Silver Skin Onions, Courgettes Striata Di Italina, Black Beauty and Green Bush, Chilli Hot Patio Sizzle and some Lavender.


So, I think that I would go to another seed swap if one was available locally, and I have also decided that I will not be splitting packs of seeds up to distribute to plot holders on our allotment - it took far too long to split the relatively small number I did for the seed swap.

Instead, once we have a communal building, I will put the spare seeds in there that anyone can take whatever they need and put back any they haven't used.