I want to recommend a site for those of you who graft and are looking for specific varieties of fruit trees for breeding projects. And at the same time, I post this as an inspiration for how seed exchanges could be made more effective.
E-fruitiers is a French-language network for sharing scions for grafting with members mostly in France and Belgium. The site is pretty clunky and not so well-designed (running on Wordpress), but it is one of my favorite places to exchange plant material. Members exchange scions freely on a basis âyou send me something from your orchard, I send you something you want from mine in returnâ.
The best thing is you can search the whole site for all the varieties currently and previously offered, which makes it one of the most comprehensive databases of interesting cultivars I know of. When you find the variety youâre looking for, the site indicates you has it on offer and you can then browse those members lists to see what else they have that might be of interest. From there, you contact a member to ask if theyâre interested to send the scions youâre interested in.
This kind of search capability is something the seed sharing community could benefit a lot from. Iâm not a tech-wizard. But if thereâs anyone out there with funding or in need of ideas for how to draw more people into landracing, I think well-functioning seed exchanges is the most powerful magnet.
Absolutely agree. I think the value of organized information is highly underappreciated. I have some outdated knowledge in basic web design, but not nearly enough for the type of site features you (and I) are envisioning. However I bet there are plenty of useful templates out there to start off with. Iâd be willing to be part of whatever team collaborates to make this happen.
The French site reminds me (in theory) of Freecycle + Craigslist over here in the US.
It seems like it wouldnât be a stretch to use our âSharing Seedsâ category like this. Instead of random titles like are currently happening, folks could do something like âISO: Pecan varietiesâ where âISOâ is a common acronym on swap sites to mean âIn Search Ofâ, or âOffering: Fruit Tree Seeds/Scions/Cuttings/Etc.â or even just âWanted: Pecan varietiesâ. More simple perhaps.
Do you feel like a totally new forum would be needed for it or could a Category + Tags be usable?
Jens, I agree with your assessments and like your ideas a lot too. The âSharing Seedâ category makes sense to use. One limitation I see is that it invites members to write posts in either of two ways. One is to offer one type of seed at a time (âShort-season Cucurbita moschata grex on offerâ). But when youâre mailing seed to someone, you might as well include other things of interest, right? So the logical thing for me personally, is to identify the people that generally have seed of interest to you (and perhaps vice-versa), either because you have similar climates or interests. And some people do make long lists of what they have to offer for seed. But these threads are a bit difficult to organize and search in. Theyâre all plain text. A great seed swap site would have some tables to fill out, so you could tailor advanced searches. It would also give the site some interesting data, e.g. what people generally are growing, but this is secondary.
Not sure what the next step would be. But I offer these thoughts to keep the conversation going.
Iâve been thinking for months that I want to start a thread in fall for us to all post what dormant perennials we have available to take cuttings from. I bet a lot of us would love to swap some of those with each other.
There is a seed swapping website which is even closer to what you want named semeur.fr, here an example of tomatoes. TOMATE semeur
Sadly on this website they donât accept varieties which are not described somewhere, like a new variety or a grex. Or at least it was the case a few years ago.
The advantage with this website is that you see the approximate location the people are in, therefore the climate. You also have an overview of all the species/varieties that the person with whom you want to swap seeds has.
Not bad! Comes pretty close and seems to have most of the functionality I was looking for: a page for each object (variety, species), a search function, a list for each person what they have to offer, and a messaging function. Have you used it yourself and how has it worked?
Iâve not used it but a friend of mine has. I believe he sold comfrey root cuttings. As far as Iâm aware, you message a person who has what you want and you come to an arrangement as to what you want to do. The site doesnât dictate the terms of the arrangement AFAIK. I know the owners of the site and can vouch that theyâre pretty great people with the right permaculture mind set.
Iâll consider making a user there at some point and try out a few trades to see how the interface and the community works. If you or someone else do too, Iâd love to hear your experiences. Something I like about our community here is that people donât seem to mind just mixing and blending with everyone else - just like we mix and blend everything into our landraces, from heirloom seed to modern F1 hybrids. If someone else made an effort establishing this infrastructure, I can definitely see the benefits of using and strengthening that, instead of making a parallel structure from scratch.