National Seed Swap Day is celebrated each year on the last Saturday of January. This year, it falls on January 25th. National Seed Swap Day is a great opportunity for gardeners of all skill levels to get together to exchange seeds and ideas. January is an ideal time of year for seed swaps because it’s around the time many people begin starting seeds indoors for their gardens. Whether you are growing flowers, vegetables, or fruit this year, a seed swap can help you expand your garden variety.
Another great opportunity to acquire seeds is to visit one of the Seed Libraries at any Alachua County Library District location. Each branch of the ACLD has a Seed Library where patrons can “check out” seeds. Our Seed Libraries are supported by donations, but donations are not required to participate. And the best part of the Seed Library is that it is free for everyone! You also do not need a library card to check out seeds.
For more information about the Seed Library, please visit our website or contact your closest branch. Each library branch has its own checkout limits. Interested in donating seeds to the library? You can drop them off at any location. Be sure to include as much information about them as possible such as harvest date and variety name.
Here are some ideas on how to celebrate National Seed Swap Day:
- Attend a local seed swap or host one
- Exchange seeds with friends and family
- Participate in a community garden
- Attend local gardening group meetings and events
- Visit one of the Seed Libraries across the Alachua County Library District
Check out some books on gardening and seed harvesting below:
- Gardening in Florida
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Complete Guide to Florida Gardening by Stan DeFreitas
More comprehensive than ever, the Complete Guide to Florida Gardening explains in step-by-step fashion how to create one's own personal outdoor paradise. Addressing the needs of gardening novices, seasoned hobbyists, and horticulture professionals alike, Stan DeFreitas has, once again, created a reference book that no Florida gardener should be without.
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Vegetable Gardening in Florida by James M. Stephens
With full-color photographs and detailed expert advice, this affordable paperback describes how to grow abundant vegetables and edible herbs in gardens anywhere in Florida. Whether you’re planting spring peas and sweet corn or crisp cucumbers and the dill you need to can them, Jim Stephens offers clear explanations of useful gardening terms and practices and joins popular growing concepts with the expertise of the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.
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In this revised and updated 2nd edition of Florida Gardener's Handbook, gardeners in the Sunshine State are handed all the know-how they'll need to grow a lush, productive garden. The environmentally sound growing info for both edible and ornamental plants found here is your green thumb map to success. With profiles of more than 300 plants proven to thrive in Florida's unique climate, including shrubs, trees, perennials, annuals, vegetables, fruits, tropical plants, lawn grasses, and more, you'll be able to select the best plants to create a beautiful landscape or a high-yielding edible garden. Helpful charts highlight sun and shade requirements and offer clear and concise plant variety information. Month-by-month care and cultivation guides are offered for each plant group, guiding your journey even if you're a first-time Florida gardener. Authors Tom MacCubbin and Georgia B. Tasker, along with pro gardeners Robert Bowden and Joe Lamp'l, address the many challenges of Florida gardening, including a changing climate and saltwater gardening information. The how-to methods for planting, pruning, watering, fertilizing, and much more are rich with information essential to Floridians. This comprehensive and extensive guide is the best resource for growing in the Sunshine State. Whether you live in Nassau County, the Florida Keys, or somewhere in between, the Florida Gardener's Handbook has you covered.
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Totally Crazy Easy Florida Gardening by David the Good
Are you tired of failing at your Florida gardening? Are stink bugs puncturing your tomatoes and nematodes gnawing your eggplants? Is the sand eating your compost like an RV swallows gas? Fear not! You CAN grow buckets upon buckets of food in Florida - and this book gives you the secrets to pulling it off year after year. Lots more food - for a lot less work! Whether you want to save money, feed your family, start a survival garden, garden year-round, go paleo or build a huge prepper garden, this is the book for you. Learn the cheap simple techniques that will kickstart your Florida gardening. Discover the crops that will always come through for you. Quit hating the sand and the bugs and start reaping abundant harvests like you've never had before! This book provides the answers for both beginners and experts, delivered with humor. If you want yet another boring gardening book - this isn't it. Through combining Back to Eden gardening, Square Foot Gardening, Biointensive gardening, container gardening and some of the most productive crops on the planet, you WILL succeed! This is easy Florida gardening like you've never seen before. Pick up a copy of Totally Crazy Easy Florida Gardening and turn your backyard patch of weeds and sand into a money-saving vegetable factory that will keep your family fed no matter what the economy does. Start gardening RIGHT NOW before it's too late! Expert Florida gardener David The Good shares how in Totally Crazy Easy Florida Gardening.
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Native Florida Plants by Robert G. Haehle and Joan Brookwell
Many counties in Florida now require that new commercial landscapes contain a percentage of native plants. Native landscapes are easier to maintain, use less water and thrive without chemical pesticides and fertilizers. Native Florida Plants describes every type of regional flora―-from seaside foliage and wildflowers to grassy meadows, shrubs, vines, and aquatic gardens―-in 301 profiles and accompanying color photographs.
- Seed Harvesting
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The Garden Seed Saving Guide, 3rd Edition by Jill Henderson
At a time where commercial forces have increased control over the food supply by patenting seeds with genetically modified organisms (GMOs), seed saving has become an important skill to encourage and share. Longtime organic gardener Jill Henderson explains how preserving open-pollinated and heirloom garden seeds from one season to the next will not only save gardeners money but will also increase their self-sufficiency and help them maintain a naturally diverse gene pool of food plants. Here are some of the many insider tips you'll discover: which seeds are easiest to save, why saving seeds preserves genetic diversity, easy hand-pollination techniques for beginners, the right way to harvest, clean, and store seeds at home, how to save hundreds of seed varieties from only seven crop types, how to ensure seed viability and test germination rates, and ways to keep seeds from cross-pollinating. Armed with these simple tips and instructions, anyone with a green thumb will find seed saving easy and rewarding.
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Saving Vegetable Seeds by Fern Marshall Bradley
Become more self-sufficient by saving your own seed from one year to the next. Bradley clarifies how to select the best plants, make seed saving a part of your garden plan, save both wet and dry seed, and much more. Includes a crop-by-crop guide with more specific suggestions.
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Seedswap: The Gardener's Guide to Saving and Swapping Seeds by Josie Jeffery
Presents a guide to seed saving and creating a seed bank, providing information on why seed banks are important, which seeds to swap and save, and how to get involved with the worldwide horticultural campaign to save seeds.
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The Complete Guide to Saving Seeds by Robert E. Gough
A full-color resource explains how to gather, clean, and store seeds for three hundred different kinds of vegetables, fruits, herbs, flowers, trees, and shrubs, as well as how to propagate and care for new seedlings.
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The Manual of Seed Saving by Andrea Heistinger
This authoritative guide brings together the experience of experts in the field who have found, through careful trialing, how to reliably maximize seed quality and yield for more than 100 crop plants. Clear information on such critical issues as pollination, isolation distances, cultivation, harvest, storage, and pests and diseases is provided. The Manual of Seed Saving is an essential reference for all food producers from vegetable growers to small-scale farmers.
- Fun for the Whole Family
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Gardening with Emma: Grow and Have Fun by Emma Biggs
Thirteen-year-old Emma Biggs is passionate about gardening and eager to share her passion with other kids! Gardening with Emma is a kid-to-kid guide to growing healthy food and raising the coolest, most awesome plants while making sure there's plenty of fun. With plants that tickle and make noise, tips for how to grow a flower stand garden, and suggestions for veggies from tiny to colossal, Emma offers a range of original, practical, and entertaining advice and inspiration. She provides lots of useful know-how about soil, sowing, and caring for a garden throughout the seasons, along with ways to make play spaces among the plants. Lively photography and Emma's own writing (with some help from her gardening dad, Steve) capture the authentic creativity of a kid who loves to be outdoors, digging in the dirt.
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Let's Get Gardening by Radhika Haswani
Learn to grow your own vegetables and herbs, attract awesome wildlife such as butterflies and bees, and be a green gardener with lots of recycling tips. Whether you've got a big vegetable patch or just a windowsill, you can grow all sorts of plants with this colourful RHS book. Packed full of easy-to-follow step-by-step activities, this book helps children learn about conservation, recycling and sustainability in simple, practical, and hands-on ways. They will build a mini nature reserve, turn old wellies into plant pots, grow fruit and vegetables that they can really eat, plant a bee-friendly space, create a ladybird sanctuary, and much more. Help nature with every activity and discover the joys of growing plants from seeds. So grab your potting mix and let's get gardening!
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Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots: Gardening Together with Children by Sharon Lovejoy
Here are 12 spirited, easy-to-implement ideas for theme gardens that parents and kids can grow together, connecting children to nature through gardening. Each project includes a plan and the planting recipe--as well as a "Discovery Walk," activities and crafts to make with what you grow. And each is illustrated with author Sharon Lovejoy's lyrical watercolors.
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Easy Peasy: Gardening for Kids by Kirsten Bradley
An introduction to easy gardening so you can grow everywhere and anywhere. Whether you live in the city or the countryside, there are plenty of places you can plant and grow. For a new generation of green fingers there are different ways to bring nature into the home. Make your own pots, build balcony boxes, create your own bird feeders and even get friendly with worms! Each activity has been carefully chosen to create living, renewable and sustainable environments for kids and their families. Each activity has been carefully written by Kirsten Bradley, a leading practitioner in permaculture for kids and co-founder of Milkwood permaculture farm in Australia. The simple steps and beautiful spot illustrations make activities fun and easy to follow. The book will also feature non-activity spreads explaining the importance of why and how nature works. Illustrated by Aitch, a Romanian artist whose folkloric illustrations pay homage to vintage botanical books while giving each page a sense of modern magic.
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The Nitty-Gritty Gardening Book: Fun Projects for All Seasons by Kari Cornell
Grow your own fruits, vegetables, and flowers! Become a gardener in any season with these fun and easy projects. You don't even need a garden space--many of these activities can be done by planting in containers to set on a porch or a patio or even in a window.
Descriptions adapted from the publisher