Contribute to seed sovereignty for the whole community while learning about how to garden with a seed-steward mentality! Our work parties are currently a blend of garden tending and informal workshop; we have much to demonstrate and teach this time of the year!
Join us on the very first volunteer day this season. We will be broad forking the beds and planting peas. There are also flats of seeds to sow. Sun, March 26, 2023 @ 10:00 am to 1 pm
RSVP (see below) is preferred, so that we can plan ahead for the day and provide you with any updates in case of changes.
Current Projects Include:
Working up and preparing beds
Transplanting starts
Spreading compost
Seeding beds
Hope you can join us during this part of the season!
After a two-year pause the annual Salish Seed Swap has returned!
This year‘s event was a resounding success with over 150 people attending in three hours. We had a lot of good help from volunteers setting up the table and organizing the seeds. The three hour event went by fast with lots of good discussions and connections made. Thanks goes out to the Bellingham Unitarian Fellowship for sharing their space for this amazing community event.
There were several presentations to the group offered to the group. Michael Pilarski gave a talk on efforts of the Global Earth Repair Foundations work. Brian Kerkvliet and Virginia Malmquist gave an overview of the history of the Salish Seed Guild and its seed garden project. Resulting in packaging and distributing over 10,000 packs of seeds back into the community.
They outlined a couple of new initiatives of the Seed Guild’s being launched this year. The first is a membership program with incentives for members. The second is an Adopt a Seed program where members can plant and grow out seeds which will be processed and distributed by the Salish Seed Guild the following year. Workshops and other volunteer work parties will be planned throughout the season so there’s lots of ways for people to get involved at all different levels. One of the main goals of the seed guild is to teach people how to save their own seed from crops in a safe, productive and responsible way.
There were several vendors at the swap offering garden related products and value added herbs and tinctures from Wayside Botanicals, Flower plants, garlic bulbs sets, cuttings from Inspiration Farm, books, herbal remedies and rare and unusual seeds from Friends of the Trees Botanicals, adding a nice mix of diversity to find. There was ample time for networking and connections between diverse groups of people aiming to strengthen our food resilience and independence. Groups from school gardens, community gardens, personal gardens, to small farms and indigenous organizations. All had something to share and gain by attending.
The seed tables that were organized into categories such as root crops, greens, brassicas, cabbage, kale, cauliflower, herbs and flowers, peas and beans, corn and grains, squash and cucumbers and many others adorned the seed tables. Much of the seed was already packaged up but large quantities of bulk seed was also available for people to package in recycled envelopes available around the room. Knowledgeable people were available to help field questions behind the table, helping people choose varieties and package seeds.
Celt had this to add, “The 2023 Seed Swap had wonderful energy. After a break of two years, previous participants and new faces were so excited to attend. Our Seed Ambassadors fielded questions for the entire time. Some were experienced gardeners and some were college students doing an enthusiastic job of looking up the answers on their phones. I was at the tomato and lettuce table, right at the entrance. I was impressed by the number of new gardeners. I had many questions about growing lettuce, tomatoes and peppers in containers (absolutely works.) Look for container gardening information coming to the Salish Seed Guild website.”
We had only a few hot pepper varieties, mostly donated seed. If anyone would like to adopt a pepper and grow it out for seed, contact us. Peppers out cross more than tomatoes, so it works best to grow several plants of a single variety.
Hi Garden Friends, this year’s seed harvest is starting. We harvested snap peas and parsnips. The parsnip seed crop is amazing. Parsnips are delicious steamed, baked or in soup. Parsnip seed has a short shelf life, so we plan on giving it all away next spring.
There is still time to save seeds this summer. The herbs and flowers are flowering and forming seed heads. If you have peas or beans left on the plants, leave a few to dry down. Remember to save seed only from open pollinated varieties; hybrids don’t come true or may be infertile. You may have lettuce or kale that bolted in the heat. That is a great opportunity to save your own seed for next year.
We will be offering two workshops on seed saving again this summer. One will be on processing dry seeds, Follow the link for more information. The other will be on processing wet seeds such as tomatoes, stay tuned date yet to be set.
When you are out shopping, check for seeds on sale. You might want to buy favorites for next spring and store them somewhere dark, cool and dry over the winter. The seed industry is being challenged by erratic weather and convulsions in global trade.
Join us for Inspiration Farm’s annual Spring vegetable and permaculture plant sale! Coming up this Saturday and Sunday. 11am to 4 pm. Hope to see you to help find the perfect plants for your garden.
We will also have a place to trade or gift plants and seeds to other attendants. To sell or trade you can show up a little early say 1-1:30 and set up. You can bring a table or display on the ground or the back of your car or truck.
If you are planning on attending the tour please consider carpooling with others. Folks with plants to sell or swap can arrive at 1:30 Guided tour will be from 2-3. Self guided tour and plant sale/swap will be from 3-5. Look forward to seeing you all!
Canopy Trees
Over Story Productive Trees are the most important element to consider in a Plant Guild. Long lived productive verities of Nuts, Fruits, Fuel, Forage, Fodder and Timber. Lovely long lived multi functional Trees.
Bushes & Shrubs
Supper Food Berries compose the understory, A large number of shrubs offer many Functions and Flavors of Berries, Herbs, Forage, Nitrogen Fixers, Fiber and Habitat for birds and insects.
Vines & Canes
Find a Devine Vine, Vertical plants add an interesting dimension to your plant assembly tying it all together with an array of grapes, kiwis, hops, honeysuckle and cane fruit to suit your needs and tastes.
Ground Covers
Herbs to Heal and feed bees and butterflies. Low growing ground covers holds space and builds soil while producing a wide array of Forage, insectaries Medicine, Herbs and Teas.
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.
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!
We’ve been busy at work reaching out around the county to find more seed distribution sites. Here are the new ones we’ve just added!
To get the current list of locations at any time, you can go to our website at www.salishseed.org and click on the “seed distribution sites” tab.
Please share this with anybody you know in these communities who might want some free seeds! [Please note that food banks may have specific requirements to access services. If you are not a food bank customer, please see our master list for locations available to all.]
We’ve been busy at work reaching out around the county to find more seed distribution sites. Here are the new ones we’ve just added!
To get the current list of locations at any time, you can go to our website at www.salishseed.org and click on the “seed distribution sites” tab.
Please share this with anybody you know in these communities who might want some free seeds! [Please note that food banks may have specific requirements to access services. If you are not a food bank customer, please see our master list for locations available to all.]
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
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!
