Count me in!

I'm definitely in!

Hi - this month will be too busy for me BUT, because no one should ever ship bulbs or tubers into California (remember it is not legal but more than that it protects the nation's food), if anyone from CA signs up - I'll go ahead and ship them a few tubers from my garden and their assigned partner can do the rest :-) .

Maggie, I have never heard of that.. is the rule the same for a plant?

If that's correct, we're all guilty, many times over, and have been for years. Oops!

Oh yes Dan & Lisa - VERY Correct. Some folks have written they recall the agricultural inspection stations (when you drive in to CA they confiscate plants) but never checked about mailing (and didn't make the connection that they confiscate plants at the border because you're not supposed to bring them into CA). No plant material (living, dried, bulb, tuber, rooted cuttings, cuttings) may be sent into California - it is against the law with fines possible. Dept of Ag: "Quarantines: .. It is unlawful to ship or transport any plant, cutting, animal, fruit or vegetable into California..have serious legal and financial consequences for the persons involved" unless it is from a company with phytosanitary certificates - (the link is the .GOV website that's from). I did call them and get confirmation that seed trading - as long as there is no selling going on (and preferably not much chaff) is ok. There are even intrastate quarantines (Southern CA has more agriculturally damaging pests than the Central Valley bread basket currently does for instance).

It isn't just people thinking they can send "clean" plant material without bug eggs - we have some micro-organisms killing off swaths of native plants right now that they haven't yet identified where it came from. Some folks think, well it's hard to get caught - but it's more about protecting the nation's major food growing areas. I really don't know how the gardeners who do know (some don't - they don't teach it in high schools or run ads on tv) can ignore it. It's why at the top of every exchange forum there's the legal disclaimer that you must check local laws. Houzz almost didn't carry the exchange forums forward but went with the disclaimer way back when they took on the forums.

This is topical as it's National Invasive Species Week(February 27-March 3) so our various Master Gardener programs are trying to spread the word. UC Riverside is where most of the Invasive Species fight happens - they say On average, California acquires around six invasive species per year, this is a rate of one new species every 60 days. It's a big deal and there are always food crops they're trying to save (or swaths of native forests and plants).

I hope we can get a few more people interested in swapping this month. I thought I was keeping it simple.

Do we want to continue with the 3 of us Dan and Paperfinch?

Sure!

I'm thinking we could take the month off and try again with April.

Lisa, sorry, I'm unable to participate in your swap this year. Having knee replacement surgery and that will put quite the bite in my spring planting, unfortunately!

It looks like it's not a good month for swapping. We can try again next month..

Val,good luck on your surgery!