Dear
Librarians,
We
are all grateful for the work you do! No one in a seed library does
more for the well-being of the library than you! In your hands rest
the sacred seeds we share with one another,holding in trust for the
generations that will follow on.
There
has never been a consistent way to deal with how many seeds should be
found in a packet. Initially, with SLOLA, librarians weighed
the seeds at checkout. You can imagine what that scene was like!
There were long waits to get your seeds, even with three or four
librarians helping check out seed.
We tried
measuring spoons for a very short time, but it never caught on with
librarians. The general attitude seems to be more seeds is “more
better and lets fill that envelope up!” But this process needs to
be reconsidered as contradicts the reasoning for a seed library to
exist in the first place.
We did not
feel when we started out that members should expect to get ALL their
seeds from SLOLA. Our library was not created to supply every seed to
everyone. In fact, looking at the library from a viewpoint that
emphasizes out-flow from the library, misses the entire point. I hate
it when people say “Oh, it's free seeds!” It may be, but that's
not the whole enchilada and starting with the “free seeds”
thinking totally ignores why hundreds of hours have been volunteered
to get these seeds to people.
Seeds from our library are meant to be returned.
We
do have a few varieties of seeds we give out and do not want back
(I..e. cabbage family plants that cross) but for the most part, we
are providing seeds in order to build up an inventory of seeds grown
in and adapted to our community. It is one of the reasons why SLOLA
did not start with city libraries. We wanted actual gardeners to
dispense and check in seeds – someone who was more or less familiar
with the seeds and each of their limitations or strengths. We have
proven, in the last 10 years, that our reasoning was faulty in that
we get no more seed returned that the library seed libraries – and
in fact, our insistent harping on the return of seed may have, in
fact, backfired as people began to stay away in droves. However, in
filling packets, we work with the idea that members get enough seeds
to attend to their purpose leaving enough plants to return.
The seed
packets we hand out are not meant to be full enough to compete with
commercial packets. They are meant to have enough seeds for the
member to grow and harvest for a family, providing sustenance and
some seeds left over to produce seeds for the library.
In
practice, checking out seeds for a large tomato, one might include 8
seeds per envelope, but for a cherry tomato, only six. Especially for
those more vigorous vines of cherry tomatoes. You can get by with
less tomato seeds in Altadena than you can on the coast because so
many fall to powdery mildew on the coast and the dry heat in Altadena
at minimum slows powder mildew.
In both cases,
the member should have plenty of tomatoes to eat with enough left
over to save seeds.
It is
important, in the case of the larger tomato, to try to obtain seeds
from more than one plant – if this means harvesting tomatoes from
several plants and only taking seeds from a quarter of each tomato,
this is preferable to having all the seeds from a single specimen
plant. Diversity is a challenge when we have so few people actually
returning seeds. The larger the gene pool for the seeds we save, the
better!
Having used
the example of the tomato, remember that each plant and each seed are
unique and deserve their own attention. The more seeds you've grown
and played with in your garden and the amount of hours you have spent
in formal instruction on seed saving, the more grounded you will be –
and I say that without the slightest bit of irony.
Each type of
seed must be considered differently according to season (warm or
cold), annual, biennial or perennial, method of pollination,
likelihood of crossing, and level of difficulty in growing in our
climate – taking all that into consideration for how many seeds are
given per checkout. Every so often, someone brings in a bag of a
million cilantro seeds – put them on the free table – most of us
have stash of cilantro hidden under the bed and those who don't, soon
will!
Return of the
progeny of seeds checked out is one of our most important principles.
We want to ask folks to make an effort to save seeds – but also
give them the information on returning seeds. There is a balance to
this that I'm afraid has not been mastered. From the beginning of
SLOLA we held monthly meetings where members were admonished to bring
back seeds from their plants and I am convinced that the constant
drumming of that theme managed to scare enough people into leaving
SLOLA rather than bring back inferior seed. There has to be a middle
ground where people recognize they are not being given “free seeds”
but are expected to bring back seeds as soon as they possibly can.
There will always be a gang among our members who do not grasp what
the organization is actually all about. I believe we are strong
enough to proceed without their contributions or understanding.
Still, we should try to reach them.
If there are
comments and thoughts about this memo to Seed Librarians, please
respond to me at greenman@slola.org.
I look forward to exploring this topic with you in greater detail and
encourage ideas and commentary. This paper is posted – along with
others at https://slola.blogspot.com/
where I am keeping all the SLOLA Best Practices memos as they are
written.
David King,
Best Practices
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