Category: Event

Seed Swap 2026

Posted on by Brian Kerkvliet

Seed Swap Review
Our spring seed swap was a great success and an inspiring social gathering. Numerous fruitful conversation that connected community members. Hundreds of varieties and thousands of envelopes of precious garden seed were exchanged among a cheerful, musical and educational atmosphere.  We come together in early spring to have an opportunity to share our successfully saved seeds and to gather seeds to plant in this year’s garden.  A record amount of homegrown seed from our community was donated to the Swap this year! Folks with seed to share or members of the Salish Seed Guild had early entry or free and others are able to gather what seed they need for a suggested $10 donation at the door, a donation well spent to provide so much value, not only in seed, but to community food resiliency.

Money raised at the door will be used to cover the cost of renting the hall and providing funds to purchase envelops and supplies that further the goals of the Salish Seed guild.

Seed Swap 2026 also featured local vendors selling plants, starts, salves, art, etc… Inspiration farm was there with many seed and plant offerings and permaculture education. The Regenerate Whatcom table shared efforts to network community members around regenerating the local Bioregion. There were info booths for the Geo Garden Club app, how to save seeds, care for Mason bees as well as delightful live music by Harper, Colby, Gary and others. A fine spread of healthy snacks and delightful herbal tea (from Living earth Herbs) to keep us going : ).   (Next year there will be coffee Emoji…)

And the most amazing gathering of wonderful plant enthusiasts, old friends, sharing hugs, info and seeds!

Join us at one of our future events

First Spring Seed Garden Day

Posted on by Brian Kerkvliet

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!

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨

Attending?(required)

Seed Saving Summer 2022

Posted on by Brian Kerkvliet

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.

That is all for now, Celt

Spring Plant Sale Selections

Posted on by Brian Kerkvliet

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.

In Addition on Sunday May 1st, 2-5pm we will have a farm tour 2-3pm and PLANT SALE and Swap for International Permaculture Day on Sunday

You can shop for plants ahead of time and I will have them ready for you to pick up. We are donating 10% of all sales towards the Salish Seed Garden Project.

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.

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!

New Seed Distribution Sites Just Added!

Posted on by Krista Rome

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.]

READY TO GO:

  • Lummi Food Bank – 2830 Kwina Road; Fridays 12:30-3pm
  • Nooksack Valley Food Bank – 204 N Washington St; Everson, WA; Thursdays 10am-1pm; 6:30-8pm

COMING VERY SOON:

  • 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

New Seed Distribution Sites Just Added!

Posted on by Krista Rome

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.]

READY TO GO:

  • Lummi Food Bank – 2830 Kwina Road; Fridays 12:30-3pm
  • Nooksack Valley Food Bank – 204 N Washington St; Everson, WA; Thursdays 10am-1pm; 6:30-8pm

COMING VERY SOON:

  • 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.