Tag: event

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!

Upcoming 2023 Seed Events

Posted on by Brian Kerkvliet

Salish Seed Swap is back!

February 18 @ 12:00 pm – 3:00 pm

At the – Bellingham Unitarian Fellowship Downstairs

12 noon to 3pm – Masks Requested

$10 suggested donation, at the door. No one turned away for lack of funds
Early entrance (11:30 am) for members of the Salish Seed Guild and people bringing seeds to share.

New! To Become a Salish Seed Member now, Click here

Free Presentations and Workshops

  • 12pm – Global Earth Repair. An overview of the worldwide eco-restoration movement and what we can do in Whatcom County.   Presented by Michael Pilarski. Friends of the Trees Society
  • 1pm – Learn About the Salish Seed Guild & Preserving local seed heritage!
  • 2pm – Garden Strategies for the PNW

A Past Seed Swap Gathering

Help us promote it, Download the poster and..

Here is the link to the FB Event share away on social media!

Join us as a Vendor!

If you are interested in vending your garden related products to hundreds of people at the Annual Seed Swap. This will augment our free and barter related seed swap event. To secure one of 6 vending tables click here.

“Intro to seed saving” Presentations at local Libraries.

Planning, selecting, tending, harvesting and saving vegetable seeds.

Join one of our long-time seed-savers and amateur seed breeders, Celt Schira for workshops on the essentials of backyard seed-saving. Celt will present background information on seed saving and plant breeding, discuss dry seed and wet seed processing, and share some musings on the deeper reasons for growing heirloom vegetables and saving seed.

When and where

  • Wed 3/1 2:00-3:30 North Fork
  • Sat 4/1 Sat 1:00-2:30 Lynden
  • Wed 4/5 6:00-7:30 – Everson
  • Sat 4/8 1:30pm – 3:00pm South Whatcom Library.
  • Sat 4/22 10:30-12:00 Deming
  • Wed 5/3 6:00-7:30 – Blaine

Adopt a Seed Program

This year we are launching an Adopt a Seed program. This Program will bring the community together, allowing you to help the Salish Seed Guild grow out a wider variety of organic seeds for the community. You will be able to choose from a variety of crops we are looking to grow out for seed production. Most of these varieties will be the easier crops to save seed from. Not needing any special skills like hand pollinating or isolation. Learn More!

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.

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: 

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