The swap is less than three weeks away and here are some thing you need to do. If you haven't already done so you need to be packaging your seeds. The most common way is placing them in a small 2" x 3" ziploc bag and insert an information sheet including the name of the plant, age of the seeds and your screen name.



After you packaged your seeds you need to create a seed list. Follow the link at the top of the swap page. Make sure you click on the arrows next to the seeds that you want to make available for this swap. If you have seeds in your list that you don't want to include in this swap, leave it unchecked.




Also you need to click on the link at the top of the swap page that says: "Manage your swap profile" You must fill in your name and address in the first box. This is what I will use to send your seeds back to you. Your name and address will only be visible to the swap host. The second box is for any information about your seeds that you want other traders to see. For example if you grow organically and don't use any chemicals on your plants.

I was planning on doing things a little backwards and had a question about the dates. If I am understanding correctly from 1/5 to 1/12 is when people select what they want. On 1/12 that ends and we get a list of what to send and start packing it up. Then we have to have it postmarked by 1/19? If it actually has to be to you by 1/19, I may have to do some more things ahead of time.

Trading Begin: January 5, 2016 (7 days)
Trading End, Send Seeds to Host: January 12, 2016 (7 days)
Deadline for seeds to be sent: January 19, 2016 (11 days)

I wanted to be able to offer a good selection and quantity, but not have to make up every seed packet ahead of time. I have done that in past group swaps and made up way too many packets of one thing and not enough of another. It ended up being more work and I had a lot of leftover seed packets to donate. So now I usually just keep my collected & cleaned seed in big envelopes and print out a bunch of labels with everything filled in except the last digit of the year. That way I can quickly make up new trade packets as needed. But, in a very large swap it may still take me a few days. If it is possible to see what is being claimed during the trade phase, I could work on it then as well.

I will be making another post before the swap to make sure everyone understands the dates. But the start and end dates are controlled by the system which operates on UTC which is 6 hour ahead of here. So the swap will actually start on January 4 at 6pm Central Time. It will end on January 11at 6pm Central Time. The deadline for seeds to be sent is still the 19th and that is the day you need to have it in the mail. After the swap ends there will be a link where you can mark it as sent and post the tracking number so I can follow it's progress.