Author: Brian Kerkvliet

Our Grant Proposal

Posted on by Brian Kerkvliet

We wanted to share our recent grant proposal that was submitted to the “Gardens for Good” grant competition. Thank you all who voted for us!

Please help us get across the finish line by sharing this with all of your friends and family on your contact list. You can forward this email and here is the direct link to vote by the end of April 1st 2022

Our Community Seed Garden serves Whatcom County in Washington State. The core group of individuals are passionate about growing local organic food with over 50 years of combined experience. Their ongoing involvement in the local seed exchange has put seed in the hands of our community for many years. This passion created the current non-profit organization, Salish Seed Guild (SalishSeed.org). The Guild was established in 2021 to promote personal community gardens through seed distribution. The co-coordinators, Brian (InspirationFarm.com) and Krista (ResilientSeeds.com), have grown food and saved seeds for many years. They  organized the Salish Seed Garden as a project of Sustainable Bellingham (SustainableBellingham.org) a 501(c)3 organization.

This regional Salish Sea network of seed-saving gardeners – farmers and advocates support the open exchange of seeds, through workshops and educational demonstrations, and by researching, building and acquiring appropriate-scale seed processing equipment and storage facilities. The Guild serves a diverse community, including tribal nations, school gardens, food banks, and communities that are designated food deserts. 

In 2021, several organic farmers donated a portion of their land for the seed saving effort. On a ¾ acre plot over 50 volunteers donated hundreds of hours gathering in the effort to plant, maintain, harvest and process more than 60 seed varieties and later distribute over 5000 packets of locally grown seed as well as other purchased seed. More than 10 pounds of seed were retained for future planting and inclusion in the seed library. Volunteers participated in workshops and events designed to promote seed saving and processing techniques free of cost and/or by donation.  

The Guild grows, selects and stores seeds from plants that express genetic strengths adaptable to our soils and changing weather, or unique heirloom qualities that could enhance the resiliency of our local food system. 

We envision a future where a majority of local farmers and community gardeners are saving at least some of their own seeds, with each individual playing a vital role in stewarding locally adapted seed varieties and diversity.

This grant will allow us to continue to expand this important effort in our community with the purchase of additional tools and supplies, seed processing, storage and distribution equipment and the ability to offer small stipends for key coordinating positions  necessary to help to ensure long term success.  

Here are two recent articles on the Salish Seed project

“Seeding the Future” in The Planet Magazine

“Seed Swaps Strengthen Community“, In The Salish Current

Help Salish Seed win Funding!

Posted on by Brian Kerkvliet

We have applied for a “Gardens for Good” $5000 funding grant to that will help our project continue.

The catch is we need your help to get the votes to win. Will you please consider taking a moment to click on the link below to cast your vote. Even better yet if you can share this with your network of friends!

Thank you to those who care about preserving local seed stewardship.

One vote per email is allowed. We need votes by April 1st!

Thank you for your help ensuring this project continues!

Help us win a funding grant!

Click to Vote for the Salish Seed Guild.

Please share this to anyone who cares about preserving local seed stewardship.

We need votes by April 1st! Thank you!

Salish Seed Garden Update

Posted on by Brian Kerkvliet
Greetings, Fellow Seed Stewards! It’s been far too long since we have all joined together in the Community Seed Garden and we wanted to share with you all of the exciting updates for the 2022 season, and welcome the newcomers onboard! We hope that you all have weathered the flooding and the harsh winter alright and are starting to feel the inspiring energy of the bursting buds for the coming gardening season!

Please read on for info about the 2022 seed distribution sites (just launched!), a re-cap of the inaugural 2021 Community Seed Garden season (with fun photos!), and our plans for this coming year. And if you joined us last year, we welcome your feedback and ideas about what you loved and what adjustments we could attempt to make this year even better. In fact, as we are trying out a new email platform, we’d love to hear back from any who wish to just pop back a quick hello. SEED DISTRIBUTION SITES
 All those seeds so many of you helped to plant, tend, harvest, and clean last summer? They are going out to the community in our free seed displays! A group of dedicated volunteers has been working hard the past few months to build seed displays and package up thousands of packets of seed from what we grew together! This is supplemented by bulk purchased seed from northern seed companies we like, and donated seed from other companies, for the things we can’t grow, so that we can offer a full array of locally- and northern-adapted seed to local gardeners.
Free Seed Boxes ready to pollinate Whatcom County! We make an effort to serve lower income, disadvantaged, and rural communities, as well as having a few distribution sites easily accessible to all. A full list of our distribution sites and more information is here on our website. Donations are encouraged in exchange for the seed packets, from those who can afford to contribute, so that we may continue to do this work of stewarding and sharing locally-adapted seed into the future. 
2021 Community Seed Garden Report
 Our inaugural season for the Community Seed Garden was an astounding success! With Inspiration Farm as host for the garden, together with 60 volunteers putting in over 600 hours, we grew over $5,000 in wholesale value worth of seeds for our distribution efforts. Once in packets, this translates to over $20,000 in seed packet value to benefit our community and contribute to local seed sovereignty with locally-adapted varieties.

We hosted 3-hour educational work parties once or twice a week, from April to October, sharing skills on planting, tending, harvesting, and cleaning various seed crops, using organic permaculture-based methods. In addition, we had four focused workshops, two on “Seed Saving 101”, one on saving tomato seed, and one for squash and cucumbers. We produced heaps of seed for beans (dry and snap), peas, lettuce, tomatoes, summer and winter squash, beets, spinach, favas, popcorn, grains, leeks, onions, cilantro, calendula, radishes, kale, basil, sunflowers, and parsnips. 

2022 SEASON PREVIEW
 We are excited to launch into Year 2 of our collective efforts to grow and learn together in the seed garden! We expect general work parties to begin in early April, and we are still working out dates and times for this year. If you are interested in volunteering in the garden and are not already signed up on our garden work day volunteer list, please do so here. And we’d love for you to share this opportunity with any friends and family members you think might be interested!

Do you have a school group or community group that would be interested in scheduling a specific work day together at the seed garden? Please reach out, we’d love to have you and work with your schedule!  If you are working with a community group that wishes to save some seeds at a different location, and would like some advice from or collaboration with the Salish Seed Guild, please let us know! 

 
FINANCIAL SUPPORT
 We are so grateful for the financial support of so many who contributed to our GiveLively campaign last year and for grants from the Whatcom Community Foundation’s Youth Philanthropy Fund and the Community Food Co-op. We are currently an all-volunteer effort and depend on your donations to pay for seed packaging supplies, labels, fliers, posters, fertilizer, mulch, tools, and infrastructure such as a hoop house for seed starting and seed drying, and toolshed.

Our production, distribution, and educational efforts can all multiply with more financial support. Please consider making a donation and sharing our fundraiser with others. Click here to make an online donation, or to donate by check, put “Salish Seed Guild” in the memo and address it to: Sustainable Bellingham c/o Celt Schira 1028 12th St. Bellingham, WA 98225

Spring Plant Sale Fundraiser

Posted on by Brian Kerkvliet

Plants are Enjoyed by All.

We still have lots of plants that were started by Salish Seed Guild members. We are selling a wide selection of veggie starts for a just $1 each to raise money for the Salish Seed Garden Project. If you looking for Heirloom tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, kale, veggie or herb starts and seeds come on by and check out our self serve plant sale table at Inspiration Farm. 619 E Laurel Rd. open during daylight hours until the end of May or till they are gone. Lots to choose from and we will be adding more daily for the next few weeks.

While you are here plan some time to walk around and see the many beds of plants that we are growing in the Salish Seed Garden project this Spring. Things are looking good!

From Saved Seed to farm made compost rich potting soil we started and transplanted all these little babies. Now you can enjoy them in your garden.

Beyond Organic raised with love.

Seed Garden Update

Posted on by Brian Kerkvliet

So Much Fun this Spring!

Just wanted to give y’all a little update on the Salish Seed Garden project at Inspiration Farm. We have been having really fun productive days getting our beds prepared and transplants in the ground.

So far we have put in beets, two kinds of onions, peas, lettuce, spinach, favas, and fennel. We have prepared a lot of beds getting them ready for our main transplanting season coming up soon in May.

Starting in May we will be transplanting tomatoes, peppers onions, leeks and direct seating corn beans and some grains into our prepared beds.

We have been having weekly volunteer days for about three or four hours each week. They have been randomly selected based on the weather and what we have to do. There has been about 4-6 people attending each week. In the coming months we will start having regularly scheduled work days at the garden. This will allow people to plan and schedule to join us.

As the plantings get established it would be good to have people that can show up several times a week in small groups to do some maintenance chores like watering, weeding and just overall evaluation and enjoying the garden.

Let us know if you want to be a team leader and bring a small group out to do these things. We could set up several days on the volunteer sign-up list.

Our next volunteer day will be Sunday from 1 to 4 in the afternoon. Subsequent weekend volunteer days will probably be held Saturday mornings as the weather is cooler in the morning and more conducive to transplanting. Let us know if you want to join us we would love to see your smiling faces at Inspiration Farm!

Salish Seed Distribution Locations

Posted on by Brian Kerkvliet

We are getting seeds out to the community shortly! Seeds into your hands so you can get started and grow some of your own food!

The Salish Seed Guild community has worked hard to use money raised from the last in person seed swap for this distribution effort. Along with some additional generous donations we bought seeds in bulk. Combined with local seed savers contributions they have been packaged ready to be distributed at a number of locations around the county.

In the future we are planning to grow our most of own seeds so that we have an ample supply of locally adapted seed varieties to get out to our community to increase food security. Look for a nice selection a seeds at the locations listed below.

If you feel inclined we are looking for donations to further our work to bring seeds to the community from the future seed garden project.

If you are looking for some Free Seeds here is where you can find them.

From the plant
To the pack
Back to the ground
  • Birchwood Food Dessert Fighters Share Spot, Every Saturday from 12-2pm 3233 Northwest Ave (Industrial Credit Union Parking Lot) Bellingham, WA 98225
  • Foothills Foodbank 8255 Kendall Road Maple Falls, WA Tuesdays 9-11:30am
  • Bellingham Farmers Market 1100 Railroad AVE Bellingham, WA 98225 Saturday 10-3; March 20 & April 10
  • Living Earth Herbs 1411 Cornwall AVE Bellingham, WA 98225 M-Sat 10-6; Sun 12-6
  • Rome Store 2908 Mt. Baker HWY Bellingham, WA 98226 M-Sat 7am-9pm; 8am-9pm
  • Inspiration Farm’s self serve Farm Stand 619 E Laurel RD Bellingham, WA 98226

Tool Call

Posted on by Brian Kerkvliet

Hello friends of the Community Salish Seed Garden! We seek your cast-aside functional and broken tools and seeding flats!!

We are in need of a good amount of tools to serve up to the volunteer army that will be participating in co-stewarding the new seed garden this Spring! Clicking on the link will bring you to the full list of tools, supplies, and services we are looking for from the community.

Don’t have anything to donate? Fear not! We will be repairing old broken tools and wheelbarrows too, in order to best stretch the generous donation dollars we have gotten from the community. Got a broken shovel, rake, garden fork, weeding tools, or whatsit laying around being useless in your garage? Let us know what you’ve got and we will try to breathe life back into it!

If you want to help us fix some tools and know how get in touch. If you don’t know how, but want to learn, that is fine too. We will be hosting a Tool Fixit event in the near future so stay tuned!

If you want to donate items you can drop them off at Inspiration Farm or contact us to make other arrangements.

Thank you all so much for your support and consideration!

First Seed Garden Gathering

Posted on by Brian Kerkvliet

It was a beautiful sunny crisp day for our first Salish Seed Garden gathering. A group of core organizers and friends came together for the first initial planting of few seed beds.

A group of about 9 gathered a give a blessing to the first event of the season for the new Salish Seed Garden project.

We planted three beds of crops. The first two were biannual plants that Krista had grown out last year and over wintered in storage. This year they are planted out and allowed to continue their cycle of growing on to flowering to produce seed this season.

Onions and beets are biannual. This means that they do not go to flower until the second year of growth. Sometimes you can leave the roots in the ground and let them over winter and continue growing the following year. While this is the easiest thing to do it is not always the most reliable. There is always the risks of them being eaten by critters of freeze so hard they rot in the field. It is safer to harvest them in the fall and store in a root cellar type situation to be planted back out the following Spring. So this is what we did to ensure we get a good seed crop this year of these two items.

We also direct seeded a bed of Fava beans. This is one of the few bean seeds that can germinate in the cold wet Spring soil we have this time of year.

While one group was working on planting these beds another group mixed up a wheel barrow of potting mix using on site compost, horse manure sand and some amendments of lime, rock dust and inoculated biodynamic biochar.

We sifted this mix into flats and planted tomatoes, basil, fennel, onions and leeks. These flats are now germinating in the house on a rack in the warm laundry room.

It was a good day with fun folks who love to play with soil and seeds.

We got a lot accomplished, had fun, and dreamed and schemed of how to proceed with the the Salish Seed Guild Garden Growing.

BFDF Seed Swap

Posted on by Brian Kerkvliet

This growing season, the need for food-especially fresh produce- is going to be especially high, so now more than ever we want people to have the capacity to grow what they can for themselves and others.

If you have extra seeds you’d like to share, please bring those. We are reaching out to our community partners to have many seeds on hand too. We’ll also have people and brochures on hand to answer questions about growing food.

A representative of Salish Seed Guild will be at this event with seeds to share. They can also answer any questions you may have about all the exciting projects we have going on this year.

Seeds will be freely and safely exchanged in the parking lot with social distancing in place. We will have latex-free gloves for people to wear as they browse. Masks are required.

Let’s work together to make sure we all have the food we need to survive and thrive in the coming year!

Facebook event link for those who want to share and keep track of updates: 

Easy Beans!

Posted on by Brian Kerkvliet

The Gateway Crop to Seed Saving!

They are beautiful, easy to grow and easy to save seed. What a wonderful place to start.  Beans are easy because they are mostly self fertile, and so isolation from other varieties is less of a concern, and because when growing dry beans as a crop, the harvest is also the seed.  Make sure to wait to harvest the beans until the pods are dry and brittle on the vine and select seed from the healthiest plants and the largest, earliest and healthiest beans, and you are bound for success in seed saving.

I grow beans for the same reason people grow flowers, they are SO beautiful.

I love the plants and the flowers, but mostly I love the shiny jewel seeds that pop out of the pods at harvest.  I find Scarlet Runner Beans, with their big, bright mottled pink seeds to be satisfying in so many ways.  Eat them as green beans when they are young and tender, shelling beans fresh out of the pod, and mostly as dry beans, saved for winter soups and tortillas. They are delicious and nutritious and a little less work, due to their large size.

Plant beans direct in late spring when the soil warms, Mayish. Runner beans mature later than bush beans, so give them a good running start, but after it warms up. It is recommended to separate different bean varieties to avoid crossing but beans are mostly self pollinating and it has been my experience that they seem to remain true to type even when shamelessly planted all hodge-podge together. (Though I have seen a bit of crossing with the runner beans.)  Give your runner beans a good trellis and they will climb high. (Bamboo teepees, T-poles with string, a fence..)  Keep the soil moist while the baby beans are sprouting and irrigate when needed in summer.

To save seed, again, wait to harvest the beans when the pods are dry and brittle on the vine and select seed from the healthiest plants and the largest, earliest and healthiest beans. Dry thoroughly (in a paper bag in the sun or by the wood stove or in a gas oven off with the door cracked). Shuck before or after drying (in front of a good movie). Bean seed is dry enough to store when your tooth doesn’t make a dent in it while biting it.

Store in a glass jar in a cool, dark place. Label with year and type. Bean seed should stay viable for 3-5 years (or more).  Share and Replant.  “Magic Beans” make great gifts.

Contributed by Terri Wilde a homesteader, herbalist, community organizer, seed saver. Hawthorn Hearth Homestead

If you have a story or experience about your favorite seed varieties adapted for the Salish sea watershed, Contact us and we can help share it with the Salish Seed Guild.