In my local big City and the outer area’s, there is the most amazing community of gardeners and lovers of all things green.. We have so many amazing grass roots groups that have grown up into amazing programs over the ten plus years we have lived in this area.
Just a few Examples, Hidden Harvest a program that matches local folks with fruit producing tree’s on their property with local folks interested in picking, 1/3rd goes to the land owner, 1/3rd goes to the pickers and 1/3rd goes to hidden harvest that gifts to local shelters, food banks and more..
or
Deep Food Hub which has a number of projects going including workshops of all kinds and a new project that gets fruits and veggies at low-cost into local corner stores in “food deserts” and more..
But the project we are going to talk about today is the “Traveling Seed box” program
The OGF Travelling Seed Box consists of two boxes, one for Ottawa East and one for Ottawa West. The box is meant to be kept within the main city, which we consider anywhere that receives regular (NOT rural) OC Transpo bus service. We do allow people from outside the city to participate, provided they can both pick up AND drop off the box in the city.…
Ottawa West covers Nepean, Richmond, Kanata, Stittsville, and anywhere west of that.
Ottawa East & Gatineau covers Downtown, Gatineau, Ottawa South, Gloucester, and Orleans
So I signed up into the program and the seed box was dropped off at hubbies work address in the proper city main.. it’s about the size of a shoe box and the idea is brilliantly simple.
Take out a small amount of seed that interest’s you and add a package or two or more of extra seed that you have collected, dried and are not going to use in the coming year or two.
Share the wealth, share the open pollinated seeds that have been grown in our local area and in our local soils! All very good things indeed. Its nice to give back some of my seeds to the community.
The only downside I can see, is that you will not know until you grow out your plants if they are F1 crosses 🙂 but that is just fun in its own way..
For a new gardener, it might be harder that so few come with anything other then a name, no instructions of any kind come with the seeds themselves
Do you have a program like this in your area? Might be worth checking it out to see if you do..
Just another Day on the Farm 
no we don’t have one in our are but we have something like that where this local small garden it’s where we can go by and get any thing we want out of it.
That’s a nice idea, If I was close to folks in town, I can see myself having a little “seed” box that folks could just come an go to take what they need..
That’s it, Sheila, BooBoo, Tia and I are packing up and we are going to make like refugees and set up shop out your way. You have a fantastic community! I love all these ideas. c
we would take you in a heartbeat Miss C, yes we would!