There is this problem with people not returning handed out seeds or fruits. People love that i breed, but others have to return the seeds seems the mindset of the majority, Might be easier to do a mass planting on some borrowed land than invest time in community skills, when it’s the community lacking skills.
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Hi hugo, i already do mass plantings but a good suggestion for someone short on space. The point of collaborators was extra eyes, different conditions, and seed insurance. There was so much diversity to start with that I expect the diversity to continue. With outcrossing at say 20% it will take many generations if ever to become stable.
I don’t hand pollinate, but this season i might do a few selected crosses into the pure white (low tannin) lines just to see how the genes work when mixed with colours.
A bit of quiet reflection diminished my disappointment over seed return. I’m the one invested in the project, everyone else is probably mildly interested for a day or two, and don’t see the time and intellectual investment the breeder has put in. I give away the seed for free - when I get lots of stuff for free, I’m less inclined to pursue it to avoid loss - it was free! That doesn’t make the perceived value necessarily less, but it does diminish the sense of loss if there is a failure or forgetfulness. I’m not sure the community lacks skills, or appreciation - but life has many demands, and returning seed to that guy with the crazy hair and fridges full of seed probably slips down the agenda to number 257 or something. And anyway, he had a fridge full of seed.
While this discussion is probably best had on another thread, there are a number of strategies I’ve been thinking about : Sell the seed, with a refund for returned F1 seed. Or a one off payment for the first tranche, with free seed after that for the life of the project. or something.
Another approach is to get growers to help with the initial seed harvest - they then have an investment (time) in the start of the project. And they get to spend time with the person who might get disappointed in the event of non-return.
And ultimately I don’t own the seed anyway. I only borrow it from past growers.
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Do not be discouraged, 10% are very very very good numbers.
I work in other environments such as economy, marketing, ecommerce, app. An the numbers are way lower than that.
My percentages are 1% - 0,01% or even lower. Only 1 every 1000-100000 person make a trade. We got a lot of people that use our product and never make a trade. In your case 1 every 10 person make a trade back, so your numbers are amazing.
For example, if you enter the app market the numbers are much worse, you even have to pay for a user, imagine paying 10+$ for a user that install your app and you only get a trade less than 1% of them. Imagine applying that fairing to the case of seed swap. Paying 10$ for every seed packet and you only get a packet back every 1000 people.
And in the case of app you see that 80% of your new users just uninstall the app (let’s say the first week). So we are paying 50$ for users that got your app install more than a week. That is wild. And we have not even reached the worst cases or more competitive markets.
Just to give you an idea, paying more than 80$ for a click on a banner. It cost the company 80$ when a person click a link on an advert on a webpage. And you don’t know if they are going to make a trade.
I’m getting off topic, do you know the Pareto principle?
In the case of seed exchange 20% of your users will make 80% of the seeds for the swaps. And that’s fine and totally expected from human nature. Have you seen those numbers?
In my personal experience when I give away my seeds to people that do gardening or are starting gardening my rate of return is 5%, only 1 person every 20 gives me some seeds back.
If that were my worksheet, I would name the grexes or those starting varieties. You could even tell the group of people to do it. They would feel more involved in the process and it would be part of them. I would also adapt the names to the place where the exhibition or presentation was held.
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I’m interested in finding the secret sauce for increasing seed returns in communities or collaborative projects, so anyone with an opinion or experience, here is the place 
Here are some stats put together by @anna showing the Going to Seed seeds return rates for the first year of our program.
This year some of us are writing emails to people who’ve ordered seeds (did you get them? If you are, are you more likely to send back seeds this year?)
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I ordered seeds last year but did not return any. The reason being that I’m still learning how to garden, and so had no seeds to send in because pretty much everything died. This year, I’ve learned enough that I do believe I’ll be able to return some this time.
So aside from that, here’s my perspective on the hurdles between ordering seeds and returning. These are the special steps that I’ve needed or will need to take for GTS seed:
- Order GTS seed before the mixes I want sell out
- Repackage and store GTS seed, separately from my current seeds
- Germinate, label, and plant out GTS seed, separately from my current seeds
- If any plants survive to maturity and seed-setting, harvest GTS seed, separately from my current seeds
- Dry GTS seed, separately from my current seeds
- Package, label, and store GTS seed, separately from both my current seeds and the original GTS packets
- Find the instructions and address for returning GTS seeds
- Figure out how much seed I want to/can return, make sure they adhere to the GTS seed category stipulations, organize and package for shipping
- Go to post office, pay for package, and ship
I’m excited enough about this project that none of these hurdles will be enough to keep me from returning seed if I can help it, even my complete discomfort with the post office because their pricing and process is so convoluted/overwhelming and my social anxiety keeps me from asking the staff for help, as they are often busy and impatient.
But any one of those steps could be a hurdle too far for some people. Maybe keeping everything separate is too much of a pain; maybe they didn’t have space after all for both their own mixes and the GTS seed; maybe they kept forgetting to look up the return address; maybe the post office is always closed when they’re off work; maybe they only managed to collect a handful of seeds from a given crop and either want to keep that small amount for their own future planting, or aren’t sure that amount would be of any use to the community anyway.
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Our community project is just getting started, so this is more theory than practice. I’m in year 1.5 of a community pepper breeding project in my liberal arts university garden coordinator role. My long term strategy for community engagement is:
- We’re naming it using the municipal tagline (we considered using the relevant school mascots, but it got to be too much of a mouthful) - it’s the Canyon City Pepper.
- We invited students from the local community college, the high school garden club, and the city youth & family center garden club to join from the very beginning stages of selection and crossing. We’re hoping that the early community involvement will help with community ownership and long term seed return.
- Once we have something semi-reliable in a couple of years, we’re going to distribute through the public library seed library and university alumni relations (we’re probably going to ask for a donation for seeds distributed by alumni relations since some will be traveling further away and all of the swag is for sale).
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I don’t know about other people, but I didn’t keep the GTS seed separate from my other crops when I planted. For instance, this year, I’m planting out the GTS cucumber seed right alongside various other cucumber varieties, and I will save seed from any and all plants that do well, GTS or otherwise, and then send a sample of those seeds back in. After all, the original GTS mixes were created by pooling a wide range of seeds, and adding in more varieties can only make things better!
(The only exception would be in the case of things like hot/sweet peppers, etc.)
But I also experienced total or near-total failure on some of my GTS crops, so I can sympathize! I actually think this is one of the key reasons for the low seed returns; many people are purchasing GTS seeds precisely because they are growing in challenging conditions, and that means that failure is even more likely than for gardeners in general.
And I agree about the confusing nature of the post office . . .
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For each species I’m doing a 36-cell tray of GTS seeds first, then mixing whatever’s left into my grex for ongoing, low-pressure use. I guess the reason I stress the separation so much is that I think we’re supposed to say where our seeds came from when we return them, and it’s much harder to remember/list out everything from my grex rather than just the GTS. Now that I say that though, it doesn’t sound as big an issue as what it had felt like.
Lol Idk, maybe I’ve been the only one so worried about separating them.
I definitely don’t keep my GTS seed separate. For that matter, this far, I’ve only submitted seed from non-GTS crops. My understanding is that the GTS seed populations were never intended to have even remotely fixed genetics, and only a few crops have targeted traits identified (such as promiscuous tomatoes, short-season melons). The main rule is to keep CMS out.
I do submit notes about what I’m submitting - the mother, potential fathers, and my selection criteria if I’ve done any selecting of my own.
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Julia,
As you know, life gets busy for most people, I got lucky that I was checking my email last year when the seed email came out (most of my email seems to be spam lately).
I think It would be helpful to have a certain date each year, so I can set a yearly reminder in my calendar, versus getting an email or a post on this message board when it opens (it can be hit or miss at that point). Just an idea, no criticism on the awesome job you and the seed volunteers are doing.
Maarten
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As personal grexes become more complicated/more evolved, I would think it would be sufficient to just say something like “seeds from 2024 GTS plants along with seeds from my personal grex” along with any relevant characteristics of your grex (“selected for early maturity” or “selected for an upright growth form”).
Just think about Joseph Lofthouse’s personal landraces/grexes! In some cases, he’s added hundreds of different varieties to them over the years. It would be nearly impossible to list everything for GTS.
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I think what’s holding me back is that I’m new at this -this is my second year. I collected tons of seeds from everything last year but we’re not supposed to send in seeds that came from a plant that came from a seed that was treated. I think this year I can keep some seeds separate from plants that came from seeds I collected last year (untreated) and seeds that came from plants from EFN and GTS seeds. I had issues last year with my tags fading and washing off so I’m being more careful this year. I’m hoping to have some contributions this year.
How can people gathering a strong local base of a variety by crossing local varieties taken from seed swaps garanty that their swap seeds where not ever treated? I understand that it’s a rule to try to block people buying treated seeds, they rarely fare well in a biological setting, we don’t want that in our genepools and don’t want that people support the industrial system.
But personally i welcome that strong local genetic base and i see it more like saving a seed from the system and if the characteristics support a low input system fairly well, i personally wouldn’t want to miss out on a seed just because it has roots in an unfriendly industry or just because great grand parents have been sprayed with cides, As long as it’s no GMO i’m cool with it, i emphasize again, personally.
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I notice you’re mentioning a lot of things about saving GTS seeds separately. I would say that’s an unnecessary step, unless it’s something you really want to do. I think anything that grows well for you and is a nice plant to save seeds from would be very welcome, regardless of whether it’s new to the mix or came from it before.
If that were clearly stated somewhere, do you think that would make it feel less like a difficult project to save seeds to share?
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Do you own a home printer? If so, perhaps there’s another hurdle that can be eliminated.
Pirateship.com is a great place to print postage online. And then, if the package is small enough to fit in your mailbox, you can just drop it in there and raise the flag, and the mail carrier will pick it up.
If it’s too large to fit in your mailbox, you can leave a note saying, “Will you please pick up the package by my door?” and raise the flag. My mailman suggested I do that for large packages, and they always get picked up, even when there’s a different person working his route, so I think it’s probably something that will work anywhere in the US.
Either way, there’s no post office trip required!
If you don’t have a home printer, another option would be to buy a bunch of stamps in one trip to the post office, so you can still affix postage at home. If I’m remembering correctly, you can even buy stamps on the post office website, and your mail carrier will pop them into your mailbox at no extra charge. So that’s another possible convenience.
@anna, in case there are many people who are interested in sending packages with purchased stamps who would want postage reimbursement, would there be a way to make it convenient for them to show how much they paid and request reimbursement?
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Yeah, I agree! Speaking as a seed steward, I think variety names are neat, but knowing the reason why seeds were shared is far more important.
“It’s a cross of Thisandsuch squash x Thatotherthing squash” is nifty and can be useful. But “this squash tasted amazing and survived a late frost that killed everything else in its species” is probably going to be way more exciting to most people.
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Yes! For me personally, that would take a lot of stress off, knowing how much or little is expected of us outside of our normal growing/seed-saving methods.
I’ll have to try out Pirateship, that sounds like a very convenient option, as yes I do have a black-and-white home printer. I also do have stamps at home but my thing has been not knowing how many stamps it’d need; I’ve had heavy letters returned before for not having enough postage. I suppose there would be online sources that list the rates though.
Hi everyone - thank you for all these comments and ideas. Please keep them coming. I think we’ve already addressed some of these issues, and I see a real need to do a better job communicating with you all!
A few notes:
- It is not required to keep our seed mixes separate! We welcome additional open pollinated genetics. The only things we ask you keep out are commercial F1 hybrids, which may introduce male sterility genes, or patent-protected genetics.
- Don’t worry too much about “treated” seed. The treatments we refer to are coatings on the seeds that contain pesticides, fungicides, or other chemicals. We discourage the planting of such seeds, and I suspect few of you are planting them.
- You can now submit seeds ANY TIME, and send a single package containing any species. Instructions are here. There is a simplified form – we want to know generally what you’re sending in, and any details you provide here are easier for us to track than handwritten notes with your package. We’d love to know if prior year mixes are included.
- When you submit that form, I’ll email you a paid shipping label. This has also been simplified so you don’t need to enter package weight and dimensions, just your mailing address. Only requirement is that you have a way to print it out!
- Key dates if you’d like to mark your calendars are: November 15th - deadline for contributing seeds for 2025 (anything after that will go towards 2026), January 1st - pre-orders open for contributors, February 1 - orders open for general public.
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I use Pirateship, aand it’s great. If you have a printer, you can also just request a shipping label through the contribution form, and I’ll email it to you.
I’m trying to avoid processing reimbursements from now on. I’d prefer that people fill out the form, and I’ll send a pre-paid label. Less work on both ends.
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