Well the weather had improved significantly for this seasonal meeting. It was a frantic seed packing event for the entire meeting and we restocked all our sales boxes with new seed and hardly had time to breath… (but luckily just enough to eat some Timtams and drink Tea)

There were a few regulars with apologies who could not make it but we still managed to gather a significant amount of seed. By the end of the meeting we had seed that was not packed – and that had to go ‘home’ again.

The seasonal seed selection included lettuce, broad beans, climbing beans, pumpkins and a lot more. Probably around 200 packets at least were packed – we stopped counting after about 120. Some of these go into the seed library where we know we have a gap or need renewals – however most of them were going into seed boxes for direct sales.

We no longer catalog those ones into the database as they just have to be checked out again. The system is working better now as we streamline it for the sales and select only the best or interesting ones to go into the main seed library. The amount of time spent entering details into the database can be onerous – so this is a good compromise process.

We are still all committed to running a seed saving workshop this summer and will likely hold it at the Bullaburra Hall in mid to late summer. The exact details will be forthcoming and discussed at the next meeting and we will try and advertise it widely in local gardening groups and with our other seed saving connections.

We hardly had much time to talk over the furious counting and sorting and packing. This was discussed at the end of the meeting and we are now contemplating the idea of having slightly more regular meetings to try and balance out the seed packing and restocking duties with the ‘talking’ about seeds and growing that we all enjoy.

Often we have collected seeds which are time sensitive and with such big gaps between meetings we don’t get to swap or distribute them at the appropriate time. And we all often have commitments that mean people just can’t make some meeting dates. So if you miss a meeting it is effectively 6 months between meetings.

The proposal is that we have some additional regular meetings based roughly around a 2 monthly timing during the spring, summer and autumn periods so that we can spread the activities out more and allow more people to participate.

We will discuss this more at the next meeting. Feel free to comment on this idea.

Happy growing and seed collecting – it looks like it’s going to be a good spring and summer for many plants.