I'd love to participate, but most of my seeds are the basic commercial ones you can get anywhere.

I should have some interesting flower ones. I normally just donate them to the Winter Sowing group for distribution, I'll be happy to package some up for a seed swap here.

I'm in. I cannot coordinate. You don't want me coordinating. Nope. BUT I have seeds and I've been paying it forward, lately.

I'll coordinate if no one else wants to. I've never done it, but am willing to learn.

Will it be done by mail or in person?

That's up to Jen, but in the past, the seed swap always has been a mail activity where participants mail their seeds to the coordinator along with a SASE or stamps and the coordinator receives all the pre-packaged, labeled seeds, sorts them, stuffs them into envelopes and mails them back to all the participants. Doing it by mail allows everyone who wishes to participate regardless of where they are located in the state.

OK, help me come up with the "official" rules, then I'll post a thread for sign ups. I've never organized one, but I have participated in a few and every one seems to have different rules. So first, what's a good minimum packet number? What if the minimum is 10 and someone sends in 15? Should it be packet for packet or are the extras just donations to share with everyone else?

The ones I've been in you sent 3 things with enough for each of the participants. For your sake, you should have everyone prepackage their seeds so you don't go blind trying to sort and separate them all. So if there were 10 people participating, they would send you 10 packets of each of 3 types of seeds. If you have a lot of people participating, you might break it into those who are interested in flowers or vegetables or you make separate groups with smaller numbers so the volume of seed needed is not so great for any one person. Alternatively, people trade for specific things and you end up the clearing house.

jlhart, that's very kind of you to volunteer. The couple of seed swaps I was involved in we sent in prepackaged seeds labeled. If I remember right it had to be within the last couple of years of harvest as well. You could send in as many packets as you wanted and you received the same amount of seed packets in return. So, if I sent in 25 packets, I'd received 25 packets. However, if there's not enough other people participating it makes it hard to disburse them. I think a minimum amount would be a great idea to ensure everyone gets back as much as they send in. On the SASE, sending in a minimum amount of stamps might be better along with a label. I only say this because if you are sending someone back quite a few seed packets, they might not fit in the envelope. The dollar store has small bubble envelopes. Maybe participants could send in the minimum stamps as well as $1 to cover the envelope? That way the seeds are protected as well and the envelope will be big enough. Just throwing some ideas out there. Maybe Carol (soonergrandmom) will chime in with some more tips since she did it before. :)

When I sent in my seeds I sent in several packets of one type of seeds as Amy stated. I also made sure to put the same amount (or try to) of each seed type in each packet and labeled them accordingly adding the year of harvest. We were also advised to put our name on the packets so that way she knew who the seeds were and weren't sending their own seeds back to them. I got quiet a variety of seeds back.

Melissa

Ok, did some research and it seems like there aren't any hard and fast rules for seed swaps, the host sets them however they want. So, how does this sound?

Everyone sends in a minimum of 10 packets, already packaged for trade (so I don't have to break them down into smaller packets). If you want to be generous and send in extras, I'll divide them up between everyone (so it may not be 1:1 trade). And seeds should be 2015 or 2016.

If you have a wish list, include that and I'll try to fulfill some if possible. Or if you have a specific trade to someone, include their name and I'll add it to their collection.

Add enough postage plus 1-2 extra stamps for the return, or include enough cash, and I'll return the change.

Send your seeds by Aug 1 (is 2 weeks enough time?), then I'll plan to have everything sorted and out within the next week. Otherwise I have VBS stuff keeping me busy the 2nd week, so it'll be after the 15th before I get it done.

Anything I'm forgetting? If you want to play, post here or send me a message and I'll send my address.

One more question: do we want to keep it closed to just the people on here, or open it up to the Facebook group? Doesn't matter to me, my thinking is the more the merrier.

I suggest you wait till at least September, maybe later, because some seeds you don't get till the end of the season.

I agree with Amy. I believe the last seed swap that soonergrandmom did was very late in the year, possibly even into January. Don't remember exactly but I know it was later so everyone had a chance to harvest seeds from their summer/fall crops.

Works for me.

If you open it up to FB, what do you do if hundreds of people respond? A response that large would be almost impossible to manage.

I'm an admin on a facebook group that has done seed swaps. Quite honestly it caused problems because it WAS so much work. If you include that many people, have them sign up in groups of 25. (About 5 will cancel so you end up with 20). Then each person lists something different they will provide. So if someone has already said they will provide a variety, then new people must come up with something different. If you do 3 varieties per person, the exchange will provide 57 different varieties of seeds (besides your original 3). We set it up so you had to have enough for 20 seeds per participant, So 20 participants would require 400 seeds per variety.

It's a lot of fun to get those 57 seed packs, but, it isn't always easy to get 400 seeds. Last year none of the tomato plants I bagged produced a single fruit. I endd up purchasing seeds, so it cost me more than it was worth. I found that many of them I wil never grow. I would be more inclined to participate on a smaller scale, but that's just me. I kind of got burned out on this.

I would like to join this, and I think I may be able to help organize this, if you guys don't mind! :)

But I'll add my 2 cents.

The swap should ideally take place in fall or winter, so everyone has time to harvest seeds. Also, posting on FB may bring in too many people and might just make this harder, as Okiedawn said above.

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A few questions for the manager:

1) Do you have a list of everyone who wants to participate? What type of seeds they can give and what type they want? As in flowers, vegetables, or fruit.

2) Have you thought of any established dates, such as when you want the trade and when sign up for this event closes so you have time to sort out who gets what?

3) Are you sure on the number of packs, and are you sure you can handle that many? Please note that only 10 people will end you up with 100 packs, not all of which may be labeled at all.

4) Do you mind me butting in? I'm sorry if you do... :(

The rules that I used are out there somewhere and I will try to find them. I did it two winters in a row and I found it was much easier to have money for postage than to use stamps because you didn't know how much it was going to take and I ended paying postage on many of them. If you have a couple of bucks for postage you can take the packages to the PO open, have them weighed, drop the change in the envelope and seal it. Everyone sent in the required number, and received the required number back, and all of the extra seeds were split equally. You were guaranteed to get the number you sent in and you got more if ANYONE sent in extra, but everyone got the same number.

Here is the old thread

Old Rules

So is this going to be a vegetable trade? Because I don't think I have 10 different types of pure vegetable seed (one garden was taken over by the mosaic virus), let alone 20!

I've never done a swap, so I'm sure I'm either over thinking it or under thinking it. I prefer Sooner grand mom's way. Send in 10 packs of whatever and get 10 back. I was thinking of adding Facebook in case we didn't have many takers on here. To my thinking, the more the merrier. But I can see how more people can make things exponentially harder.

I don't have a preference for flowers or veggies, so maybe offer it as a free for all. If you only want veggies or only want flowers then I'll try to accommodate. I participated one like this a few years ago, everyone just sent in whatever and I got such a great variety of stuff.

As for unlabeled, I admit that's what half of my stash is (lost the original packet or got a bunch from someone and forgot to label). Maybe one rule is it has to be labeled or it gets sent back as part of your lot.

As for the work involved, I don't have kids and we lead an old married couple life, so I'm not too worried about how much time it'll take. I just point out to husband dear that I can either trade my seeds for more seeds or spend money buying. When money is involved, he becomes more supportive of my "weeds".

And Hanna, feel free to "butt in". Sounds lime you've had practice doing a swap. I haven't but always thought it sounded like fun. It supports my Santa Claus mentality, I get all these seeds and get to share them with everyone.

I'm in a hurry and my eyes are tired from working so I haven't read all the posts, mainly your ideas on getting set up. One thing I wanted to mention: many.. a great many seeds truly need to be mailed in those small bubble mailers. I think it used to be about $2.50 to mail these. I forget.

Don't get short changed. First, ya gotta have those mailers and they're not too expensive but it adds up.

Let's see if anyone has any to donate? Or figure in the costs per order? Wow. This seems like a tough job.

Can we extend the "harvest date" to seeds that are a little older, because I have MANY seeds from Victory seeds that are very good and viable from 2011 (That I don't really need any more. Even some packages are not open.) I JUST started some seeds from their 2011 harvest.

for older seeds a good stipulation would be to send MANY seeds, because even if they're old if you sew a handful, some of them are viable, I find.

Just thinking out loud here.

bon

I feel like 2011 might be too long ago. Yes, some seeds might still be viable, but the majority is probably not, right? Plus, while I don't know the size of your seeds, the more seeds, the more expensive a packet is to send... Generally trades are limited to the last two years or something (2014-2016), though I know that, like you, I have a bunch of old seed stored up. :(

What about offer those as specific trades, that way the person knows they're getting older seeds? For example, I have some old luffa seeds and you're willing to take a chance they won't germinate, so I put your name on them. Personally, I'll try anything on the off chance it sprouts. One out of 50 is still one more than I had. I tried canna seeds that were over a decade old this year and got 2 plants out of it.

True, that. :)

Just maybe have this as a smaller trade rather than part of this one? Just a thought, of course. I imagine it would be difficult to organize specific people getting specific things rather than everyone getting the same stuff!