Plant Crawl / Swap Meetup / Plant Underground Railroad Idea

Had a random idea and wanted to do a temp check to see if anyone would be interested (or had already started something similar!)

I'm sure many of us have different local seeds and weeds that grow like gangbusters, as well as permie odds and ends in our gardens and seedbanks. What if we organized kind of a silk road for plant exchange?

We could have a series of local swap meetups, maybe following major highways or growing zones seasonally, perhaps meeting in state park parking lots or something in early spring--everyone could bring their extra seedlings or seed stock, and we could share or swap? It could be particularly fun for developing local landraces.

If people can attend more than one swap on different edges of their region, we could even get a kind of silk road thing going, with species being passed along to areas that need them.

For example, I could organize one around highway 90 or highway 87 in upstate NY, Catskills/Berkshires/Adirondacks/Upper Hudson Valley region for fellow cold weather gardeners, if people would be interested?

And if someone else wanted to do one further north for Vermont or New England or even Eastern Canada; or one for the Southern Hudson Valley/NE Coastal Regions, or one for Western PA, etc, on another weekend, I could also travel to that one and bring some of the things people bring to the swap meet I "host."

Thinking timing would be early spring, each event would be pretty short (an hour or two, so it isn't like a full day commitment or anything), different regions staggered on different dates/weekends, and the goal would be to have participants try to attend 2 different events per year, if possible, so there is some "flow" of genetics between nearby regions.

Let me know if you'd be interested in either organizing a regional meetup, or attending one, and if so, what your region is! If there seems to be interest, I can work on getting us organized!

I think plant swap/silk road makes sense.  I'd certainly participate in one, or potentially organize one, in my area if people are interested.

This is interesting! I might like to think about setting something up.

Reminds me a little of assisted migration—are you thinking about that at all?

Good idea. But for obtaining landrace seeds or adaptation agriculture movement as it has been dubbed now there is a worldwide organization that offers them. It's called GoingToSeed. I direct people there towards Permies site if i can, because to me permaculture and adaptation gardening fit hand in glove,reinforcing each other. They have a box travelling differing continents called the Serendipity Seed Swap or the European Seed Train in which people can put seeds that do well at their place and they can take what they like to try. I never had something boost my arsenal of crops i can suddenly grow as much as that. And i'm in Europe where we don't even have so many people's breeders as in US.
Exchanges is great, but i've just traveled an hour to one and there was one other man sitting at a table with scruffy envelopes of 2021. He was very pleased to see me though and so where the ten or so other visitors. my advice would be NOT to try to set up something apart, you know, like Permies only, but just pitch your idea to local seed swaps that already exist. Enthusiast gardeners are a dying breed and the grey hairs at those fairs are happy with all the younger people they can get to join and just have to come to terms with the fact that the younger generations see things in a much wider context than they do. Change goes slowly. First they laugh at you, then they fight you and then you win. There is a great book about Landraces by Joseph Lofthouse and there is David the Good who's done some great interviews about it as well.
We're also talking about breeding landrace shrubs, trees and cows and chickens, so this idea has come a long way already! You're not alone!

M Ljin wrote:This is interesting! I might like to think about setting something up.

Reminds me a little of assisted migration—are you thinking about that at all?

Yes! That was part of what I was thinking--didn't want to necessarily do super long distance exchanges that could introduce potential problematic "pests" (although I am very "innocent until proven guilty" with introduced species; most "invasives" are turning out to fill niches IME). But I would love to help bring some of the Southern Appalachian species that may start to struggle in coming years up to my area--and help my local species move to climates that may be more suited for them in the future.

One of the other commenters mentioned that some of this infrastructure may already exist, so perhaps we just need to pile on rather than reinventing the wheel!

Hugo Morvan wrote:Good idea. But for obtaining landrace seeds or adaptation agriculture movement as it has been dubbed now there is a worldwide organization that offers them. It's called GoingToSeed. I direct people there towards Permies site if i can, because to me permaculture and adaptation gardening are two strings on a bow reinforcing each other. They have a box travelling differing continents called the Serendipity Seed Swap or the European Seed Train in which people can put seeds that do well at their place and they can take what they like to try. I never had something boost my arsenal of crops i can suddenly grow as much as that. And i'm in Europe where we don't even have so many people's breeders as in US.
Exchanges is great, but i've just traveled an hour to one and there was one other man sitting at a table with scruffy envelopes of 2021. He was very pleased to see me though and so where the ten or so other visitors. my advice would be NOT to try to set up something apart, you know, like Permies only, but just pitch your idea to local seed swaps that already exist. Enthusiast gardeners are a dying breed and the grey hairs at those fairs are happy with all the younger people they can get to join and just have to come to terms with the fact that the younger generations see things in a much wider context than they do. Change goes slowly. First they laugh at you, then they fight you and then you win. There is a great book about Landraces by Joseph Lofthouse and there is David the Good who's done some great interviews about it as well.
We're also talking about breeding landrace shrubs, trees and cows and chickens, so this idea has come a long way already! You're not alone!

Awesome! I will look into it! Definitely would like to build on existing momentum rather than trying to start from scratch. Thank you for the tip!

Hugo Morvan wrote:pitch your idea to local seed swaps that already exist.

This is a super great idea. Reaching out to your local resources might give you an idea. Where I live, the slow food people are a great resource for seed swaps, for exmaple.
In the US, I know many public libraries went through a phase with seed banks/libraries (the ones I know seem to have left it fall to the wayside, but maybe it's case-by-case). I know I would reach out to my public library and organic center (whether that's health food store or some other holistic type thing, UU church, etc) and see what else is out there. The more the merrier.

I have never had a chance to go, but MOFGA in Unity, ME has a yearly event to swap seeds and scion wood.

https://www.mofga.org/trainings/annual-events/seed-swap-and-scion-exchange/