A Garden Picnic: How Seeds Travel

Edible Office, in collaboration with fellow information designer Erin Wilson, has been busy developing the Pocket Seed Library (PSL). The PSL is an ongoing collection of seed packets and growing instructions designed to encourage people to plant, save and share seeds. Check out the Pocket Seed Library website and, if you're in the Bay Area, join us for A Garden Picnic: How Seeds Travel, a community potluck in the magical backyard garden of Southern Exposure Gallery.

Let's Trade Seeds

Spread this activist meme: the re-awakening of community through urban farms and farmer's markets.

• Let's share. If you have seeds, I'd love to trade with you.
• Meet me at The Ecology Center's Seed Library, where people can 'check out' seeds and then return their "spawn" within a few years.
• Contact me if you want an invite to the next seed trade and Urban Homesteader Trading Card Exchange.
  
• Get involved with a food advocacy organization or local farm.

Food Advocacy Organizations & Other Farmy Links

Keep spreading this activist meme.

Food Advocacy Organizations: We like to eat great food grown lovingly by great people! Save small organic farms!

• http://www.organicconsumers.org
• http://www.thefutureoffood.com/involved.htm
  
• Environmental Working Group
• On the Commons
• The Seed Alliance
  
• http://nfu.org/
• http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/
  
• http://www.ucsusa.org/
  
• http://uas.coop/
  

Urban Farms: Get involved! Or make your own!

• Urban Home on the Free Range
• Victory Gardens

Seed Banks: Preserve Diversity! Fight Monsanto!

• The Ecology Center
• Svalbard Global Seed Vault

Farm Art: Inspire Beauty and Wonder!

• Edible Estates
• How to Homestead
• Bill Basquin
• Secret Suppers

Seed Suppliers We Like

• Seeds of Change
• Seed Savers
• Nichols Gardens

Last week I visited my friend Topiary on the day she redesigned her garden. I wanted to bring her a yacon plant but didn't feel like haggling with airport security. I settled for showing her my wallet pictures: Here's Yacon when she was just a wee tuber, here's her at one month, here's what she made at harvest time...ah, I'm a gramma now! (I have a dozen or so yacon babies I have been gifting to friends).

For the record: my obsession began long before yacon became totally trendy, a foodie rage which I predict will grow over the coming year. Yacon is so in demand, it's now near impossible to order. This is why it's good to have farmer friends.

Tuber photo by Seeds of Change

My First Seed Exchange

I recently crawled out of winter hibernation so that I could participate in the seed exchange at the Ecology Center. The potluck hoedown seed trading event reminded me of the best parts of my hippy childhood. Between us, we had an amazing diversity and abundance of seeds. Year round, at the Ecology Center's Bay Area Seed Exchange Library (BASIL) "local gardeners and farmers can 'check out' seeds with the agreement that they attempt to grow them out and 'return' some seeds of the next generation at the end of the season."

Seed Apothecary