Anyone ever did this? I've had great fun and enlarged my garden through piggy seed swap online but now I'm thinking of holding a local swap among my neighbors and friends and even people I don't know.
First step is finding a location, I'm going to see if I can reserve a clubhouse at nearby neighborhood or possibly community room at local firehouse.
Then I'll make a flier and email it to friends and tell them to invite gardening buddies, explain the process, what to bring, and also have it be potluck at lunchtime.

I'm going to mail flier or go in person to garden stores, nearby Ace hardware, etc, and ask for excess seeds or some other donation.

The date will be national seed swap day, last day in January. Anyone have experience with this kind of thing?

No I haven't, sorry. Good luck with your project.

Karen

I didn't organize it but we had about 20 at ours.. just reserved a table at a chain restaurant.. separate checks.. because it was afternoon.. and not peak time it wasn't a problem.. worked out well with no extra fee to rent a hall.. and like a round up someone held one at her house.. pot luck lunch.. she is an expert at big parties and was a fantastic day

With so many old varieties being lost, anything people do to share older varieties is a good thing. I wish you well with your local seed swap.
In Canada, we have Seedy Saturdays and some Seedy Sundays. They are organized by Seeds of Diversity, Canada. Small seed producers rent tables so they can sell seeds and/or plants. There is a table reserved for seed swapping. We take our extra seeds and drop them there. Then we can go through what others have dropped off, and take what we need.
There are usually speakers on gardening topics scheduled. Some tables are taken by local gardening clubs. Some by commercial gardening related companies. The City is usually there with information on water usage etc. The province will have information on Invasive and endangered species.

I don't have experience hosting a seed swap, but I imagine it will be very popular if you do it. We had a local plant swap in early May in my area and when I inquired, the lady said that sometimes some people bring seeds. I was the only one that brought seeds this year and it was a big hit--people love the idea of growing from seed, more than I thought they would!

.....


If your local seed swap doesn't work for you, you might want to consider an online one here on ATP!



I wonder....

if we had a single spot where ALL of the seeds could be sent to as sort of a 'warehouse' person and then re-packaged into orders so that shipping costs aren't as crazy. The original providers would be paid when they sell seeds and maybe they would give a portion of the proceeds to the warehouse/order organizer person. Just thinking out loud here...

@dave - has there been anything like this done before on ATP?

Just to clarify, I have a bunch of Bok Choy, Flanders Poppy, Daylily, Sunflower (soon), delphinium, and other veggie seeds. Someone might only want my sunflower seeds, but not want to pay the shipping costs JUST for the sunflower seeds. But, if all of our seeds were sent to someone who could package them into customized orders, then an ATP seed swap could be a HUGE success and people would only pay a single shipping price for seeds from multiple ATP users. That would be really neat, don't you think?

Okay, sorry, not trying to hijack your thread, honest! You just got me thinking, though...

that was how the piggy swap used to be, but due to health issues of the organizer it's skipping a year.

DogsNDaylilies said:... But, if all of our seeds were sent to someone who could package them into customized orders, ... and people would only pay a single shipping price for seeds from multiple ATP users. That would be really neat, don't you think?

That WOULD be great, but it turns out to be a huge amount of work for the central person or people. I love the idea of buying large packages of whatever common seeds I want, then trading away most of them for greater variety of other things. But lately I've been too busy to weed, let alone plant and cultivate or trade.

I tired offering seeds for Asian Brassicas once, but got NO takers here at ATP. I think a lot of members here have been gardening so long they know what they want and already have it, or have favorite sources, if it is easily commercially available.

Rare stuff probably finds more takers.

Judy--You might want to have it as a "plant and seed swap"--might be more appealing to more people.

Judy, Rick, and everyone else, Trish recommended that I post my idea in the Site Talk forum, but I wanted to share the link with you in case you never visit that forum (I don't visit it often, personally):

The thread "ATP Annual Seed and Plant Exchange Idea" in Site Talk forum

Please let me know your thoughts about having a large, ATP swap.

Rick - as for the seeds you had with no takers, you never know...there are new members here on ATP all of the time and if this were made into an actual event that had some amount of publicity on the home page, I'm almost certain you would find some takers. Making it an event is what is important, though. Otherwise, someone who would be interested in your seeds has to stumble upon the right thread in the right forum (at the right time) while sifting through the multitudes of threads that there are to read. Marketing is everything in this situation. ;) We really need it to be an event(s).

good luck with it.. hope it's a blast

Thanks for the heads up, it's like the piggy swap on cubits. So happy to have an online swap. Plus my acquaintances are happy about our in person local January swap

DogsNDaylilies said:...
Making it an event is what is important, though. Otherwise, someone who would be interested in your seeds has to stumble upon the right thread in the right forum (at the right time) while sifting through the multitudes of threads that there are to read. Marketing is everything in this situation. ;) We really need it to be an event(s).

I agree. In my case, I mostly have fairly ordinary commercial vegetable seeds to offer. The only time most people are interested in those is when they are planning their seed purchases. Timing, timing, timing!

I'm in the other thread, but I think that you and Jay already know most of anything I would say.
Won't let that slow me down, though!