Allotment - the Where, When, Why and How - Seed Swaps

Now this is an idea that I thought couldn't work in a month of Sundays - but I was wrong. For four years I've been attending the Seedy Sunday in Hove, where folk get together to swap excess fruit, vegetable and flower seeds, and the national counterpart to Seedy Sunday is Seedy People, which describes itself as 'the site for swapping unwanted seeds - from vegetables and herbs to flowers and trees'.

Now seeds are expensive, and we often end up with excess seed after we've germinated what we need (right now, for example, I've got two half-packets of tomato seeds and another couple of packets of bean seed, that I'm just not going to use this year) and Seedy People offer you the chance to do something more with this surplus than file it away for next year. You can either swap your seeds for a variety you have been longing to grow, take a lucky dip on a variety you have never heard of or simply send your spared seeds on to someone who you know will get great pleasure in growing them. For the price of a stamp we can all make use of the millions of seeds that go to waste every year, save ourselves money and make new friends in the process.

It really is very simple to get started:

Sort out what seeds you are willing to swap or send (send means you are willing to just send the seeds to a grateful home without receiving any seeds in exchange)

Fill out the Submit Seeds form on the Seedy People site (contact details below) and email a description of the seeds you have to swap, their quantity (roughly) and your email address

Seedy People will then add your seeds to the list of Seeds to Swap

From then on, you will receive emails from other people interested in your seeds, it is up to you to decide between you how you are going to arrange the postage of seeds and what you would like to swap

Once you have agreed the swap, you need to email Seedy People with details of what seeds you are swapping so they are able to remove those seeds from the site, which prevents other people from contacting hoping to swap their seeds for your seeds!

Get swapping at: http://seedypeople.co.uk/default.aspx

Seed allotment photograph by lollyrocks, used under a creative commons attribution licence