Starter Kits for new European members and no more Serendipity Seed Swap!

General Discussions
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@malterod , this concerns your love baby, the Seed Train!
My header is a lie. The exclamation mark should be a question sign.
Because we have to decide on it together.
On what? On if we’re going towards a two tier system. The following is my viewpoint.

For people not knowing what the Seed Train or Serendipity is, it’s a box traveling from member to member containing the most exotic and precious seeds we have to share. members can add and take what they want.

1 Grexes grow in diversity this way.
2 And people can without charge try a new crop that someone has grown somewhere and that worked for them.
I probably miss another reason, before coffee time.
The first reason, growing grexes is mostly important for experienced growers and the second reason is important to be done by experienced growers.
Who are the experienced growers, well that are plant breeders and long time growers, they get the principles immediately and know the pitfalls. They probably look into how to use a seed, how to make it work, are equipped to make it work, know how much time it costs and get the seed to grow into a prospering plant, do not eat it, but let it set seed and add more seed at the end of the season for other interested to try.
We’re a mobile public seed bank!

Being a seed bank comes with a responsability. To keep it going working.

I’m an early adopter and have pushed people in other countries to set one up, UK and Canada. Why? Because it’s so brilliant and has really pushed my project forward. I have tried a lot of crops, i like to grow as many diversity as i can in my project. I used to add two or three new crops every year over ten years gardening or so.. But receiving the seed train has boosted it exponentially. And the crops that i grew have been made a lot better and flourishing by grexifying them.
So everybody should have one. Come on Australia!

We’ve been super motivating for new members, experienced growers and non experienced growers alike.

It’s time now we leave the old system fade away. Too many people are joining the seed train now, it is going to be stressful to have it travel around two times a year.

And we’re setting up a new system for starting adaptation gardeners.

The Starter Kit!

@Holly_S her speach has motivated me to set up a Telegram group, a low barrier Adaptation gardener group for any new grower we come across to join. also people from GTS forum who want have joined to chat and discuss and advice new growers in their mother tongue. It’s time to share seeds so they’re getting the Starter Kit. Grexes and other seeds that have worked very well for more experienced growers and which the experienced growers have in abundance to share with new members.
We’re experimenting with it and we’ll have it centralized by autumn. I think it’s going to work as follows for now (as long as we don’t get too many people).

There will be a list of abundant diversified seeds new members can chose from. They send a pre stamped envelope with their wishlist to the central place and then receive their seeds.

The following people are experienced growers who can contribute if they like to the Starter Kit and send their abundant seeds to the central place. I volunteer to be that central place for now, by the way. If i missed some experienced grower please PM me, i’ll edit it in.

@AbrahamPalma @isabelle @JesseI @malterod @marcela_v @mare.silba @polarca @Richard @stephane_rave @Tanjaeskildsen @ThomasPicard @WojciechG

So to be clear, this is my personal vision and proposal, i just want to know what people think of my two tier system. And also what about the Starter Kit! It is decentralized for now and happening on Telegram Adaptation Gardening group and people are free to comment below and we’ll see what direction that takes as well. I would like to export it to the GTS platform when working this autumn.

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Bigs thumbs up! We have started a similar project in the UK, working alongside the seed train.

We’ve just completed the first seed share (I’m playing Seed HQ for now). It allows maximum diversity, quick turnover and as you mentionned, no loss of precious/rare material. I also like the idea of having experienced growers doing seed increases.

Out of curiosity, do you have a back up system in the EU group? Keep a portion of the seeds for future grow outs or longer term?

I’d love to discuss things further :seedling:

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I like your idea Hugo and will do my part to contribute to the seed pool.

If you’re open for suggestions - I would suggest using open-source communication channels when they’re available. Signal is a good alternative to Telegram, is a non-profit and also has the same features without the drawbacks. These things have ripple effects. I am happy to hear you intend to use those chat groups as a pipeline to get users on to the forum too. Great work!

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Chiming in:

  1. while I find the idea of adaptation gardening absolutely brilliant, I’m in no way a pro, and would feel super stressed out if I’d be learning with prescious seeds that others have worked on for many seasons. So a yay! to the StarterKit-idea.
  2. I get what you’re saying Malte. Considering the tendencies in the world out there, Signal would be a safer platform to use. My brother works in cyber security, he pointed that out for me.
  3. Wow, such a vibrant, fun community! I’m feeling as if “I’ve fallen with my nose in the butter” - a Dutch way of saying I’m feeling like Luck kicked my *ss big time. Happy to be here :slight_smile:
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Hi Julied,
We will provided a workshop in our annual European GTS meeting in November in Croatia (will happen in the week 3-9 of November) about seed stewardships and starter kits, and how to manage the wider spread of our adaptive seeds.
It would be great if you could come with other English for this important moment of the community.
It will also be a time when we could make a wagon transfer between our 2 seed trains… :wink:
Europe is not so far away and come join us as long as we can still travel on the continent. :grin:

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I don’t know if this can work, but I’ve purchased a few seeds from the Association Kokopelli and I like their way of doing things. They collaborate with growers who send their ‘paysannes’ seeds. The association properly distributes them, charging a reasonable price (considering the value of the seeds).
Maybe we could ask if they can open a section for grexes we can contribute to and buy from.

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Sounds like a variant of the US and Canadian seed share programs, except that people have to send envelopes.
As a volunteer for the Canadian seed share, I found that duplicating the US program had a few advantages:

  • The store is already existing (shopify); we managed to set things up a bit last minute
  • Donations via orders
  • People who order can be added to the mailing list
  • Everything is accessible on the GTS website and orders are easy to make

I think those advantages can help create growth for the program.

Now I don’t know what’s the best idea for Europe, especially given the legal context. I also don’t know if GTS can handle adding Europe. Maybe the way you propose is a lot better, but I thought I would share.

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I think it would be awesome for you guys to do this. :blush:

Speaking as a person in the US, I think it’s wonderful to have the both community grexes and the Serendipity Seed Swap. The latter is ideal for weird niche stuff, as well as the sheer opposite: things that are too common to be worth adding into community seed packs (such as packets purchased from a grocery store). It can also be used to give away community packets from a previous year that a person has found they didn’t need, after all. I see that sometimes in the US version. The Serendipity Seed Swap often fills all the gaps that the community grexes don’t fill.

But of course, I’ve never received the EU Serendipity Seed Swap, so I don’t know how you guys have been using it. :wink:

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I will gladly donate my seeds to the seed pool.

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Same! I will donate, it’s a great idea.
And am looking forward to November in Croatia to discuss further our different seed exchanges ( direct / ssswap / starter kits ) and see how some seed stewardship would fit into that.

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Just searched through my seeds and it would definetely be nice to have some outlet to “get rid of” seeds that I’m not likely to use anymore. However, I also think there should be some considerations to make it beginner and landracing friendly.

Firstly, I personally don’t like mixing staple varieties or F1s with unstaple seeds. F1s I think it’s better to make a growout and only after that subject them to selection pressure. In many cases it’s quite laborious to make them and it would be shame to loose them before they can produce. With stable varieties problem is that in many cases they would not have a chance to compete against unstaple seeds. Also with some species like tomatoes there are traits like hidden pistil that excludes them from crossing naturally. With some species like cucurbits or tomatillo these wouldn’t be such a big problem, although with limited space it would also be more effective to have them all from unstaple seeds. This could be addressed by only having unstable seeds (or likely to be so, like cucurbits after 2 seasons), which shouldn’t be too hard of a selection criterion. Some species like beans and peas on the other hand cross poorly, but are also fairly hard to manually cross so I don’t see no better way than having a mix. At least they don’t have such physical barries like tomatoes and are easy to pack even hundreds to a small space, making crossing more likely.

Secondly, many people probably need some information how different species work in a landrace context, so that they can make the most of the seeds that they have and know limitations some species have. They can also choose the species that are easiest to get started with. This could be something like a tier list of species from easiest to hardest. For example, cucurbits and tomatillo easy, peppers and eggplants medium and beans and peas hard (or some number scale). Then have some basic information on cross pollination and possible considerations within the species.

Also it would be useful to have some basics of landracing (about seeds, sowing, selection pressure and selection). I have noticed in some facebook groups that many ask for my seeds like they are some magic bullet to solve their problems or the ones that our climate causes, but don’t have any intention to change anything in the way they garden. I don’t know if this is such a big problem with the ones that come into the community (many probably have read Josephs book or his writings online), but wouldn’t hurt that people had more information available. This could be some separate file that is easily accessible.

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I think you’re pointing at something as important as seeds: how do you support the changing minds of gardeners?
If you offer adaptive seeds to a traditional gardener who does not want to change his way of growing it has no interest!

In the workshops I gave on adaptive gardening, people are primarily asking for advice rather than seeds. I therefore insist on the simplified methodology to be followed, and above all to take time to answer all questions.

Maybe we could condition the distribution of starter kits to people who have taken GTS courses, and already spent a few days browsing the forum?

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I wouldn’t be that worried about precious seeds. Personally I think there are only a few cases where I would consider seeds precious and generally it’s because there still aren’t that many of those seeds. In that case I wouldn’t be sharing those in masses anyway, but only samples to via direct seed exchange. Once I have managed to make a growout, there often is more seeds than I or even many people could use even if we tried. Like peppers I have some 5 litres of just annuums. Granted, these aren’t ones that have gone through selection pressure yet or adaption, but similar excess is very possible in the ones that have. In my case climate does hinder a bit the seed production on many species, but there are lot’s of people that have good climate to produce excess. It’s more about how much time people have to save seeds and if there is point to save that much more seeds than you and a few others could ever need. So it would be welcome that there are people that want seeds so that there is a point to save them.

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Wow. I was remotely aware of Landrace gardening and that gave me the inspiration to save seeds from the plants in my garden. I was also buying seeds - and got a bit fustrated since they were expensive in the end and didn’t perform as well as I had expected = ‘prescious’. And because seeds (both kinds) were prescious to me, I was being a bit skimpy with them.
I get it now, after binge-watching the online course (I’m at 32% so two more nights to go!) that it’s all about gene variety and adaptation to the specific biome, and keeping the fresh genes trickling in, as one would do with breeding animals for a specific purpose.
And it’s like pieces of a puzzle clicking into eachother; abundance, variety, community, sharing, tending, repeat. :slightly_smiling_face: Coming home :grinning_face:

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I don’t know if limiting is necessary, but at least pointing to right directions. For example suggesting to start with the easiest. I don’t think you can go wrong with cucurbits if you just have space and some basic considerations for selection. Tomatoes, however, you could grow here years without having any crossing. Not just because flowers in many varieties aren’t suited for it, but also because it’s common practise to save seeds from first fruits. Those are less likely to cross as there still aren’t that many flowers open. The only certain cases of natural crossing between tomatoes here have been on a bit later varieties, which started flowering when others already had more flowers. These are fairly easy problems to overcome and don’t need huge amount of instructions. Problem might be how to stress them so that people understand that there is huge benefit considering them when trying landracing.

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Hands that love plants are my friends.

I do not care if people that get my surplus seeds understand the principles of adaptation gardening, breeding or genetics.
They can learn afterwards. When they wonder “why did this work and not the rubbish seeds the industry sold me?”

Many people are trying to garden, get growing food they can trust for their family. And it fails, because the seed industry is tied to the input industry.

We don’t have to give them complicated breeding projects.

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That’s not the point. Point is that if people grow unstaple seeds without any consideration or changing their mindset, they are setting themselves to fail. The normal way is to take just the amount of seeds you need and pamper them to death. Even in the short term the seeds are likely to degenerate and there is no difference to rubbish seeds that they get from the stores. Changes are that what they get is even worse and the best case more like your standard store bought variety. Unfortunately to get the full potential you need to put some thought into it. Ladndraces that have already been bred to local conditions and are already somewhat staple are much better option for the general public. I also don’t care that much who gets the seeds if I had so much excess that I would share to this kind of project. But why not sow seeds for changing the mindset at the same time? Like I already said, there is too much luck involved whether someone will succeed with unstaple seeds without any basic information. Increasing their changes of success will increase changes that they will get onboard with the concept.

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We give varied seeds to people we have in a Telegram group called Adaptation Gardening. They’re surrounded by our very best in that group. Caring people who take the time to make it work for these interested people. Thomas, Marcela, Isabelle, Cathy,Mare etc you’re welcome as well to join if you believe we’re not going to change the mindset enough.

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Then why would it be so bad to have something in writing? Not all are in telegram or even active in social media. Or there might be language barriers. I would think it would be useful to have some pointers written down instead of having to look for it. It doesn’t devalue or take away from anything that is being done elsewhere or with other methods.

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We do post articles in French written about Joseph and adaptation gardening, invite them to GTS, send youtubes of Stephane explaining it, podcasts. People can speak in their own language beacause many latin language speaking people have difficulties with English. It’s super low barrier. With a lot of personal touch.

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