Seed Library

Seed sprouts graphic

Seed Library

The Seed Library provides a way for local gardeners to share seeds and gardening tips. 

Participants enrich our community through promotion of healthy lifestyles and preservation of heirloom and heritage seeds. Let’s get started together!

Step One: Select

Browse through our collection of donated Open Pollinated and Heirloom seeds. Open Pollinated are seeds that naturally pollinate and have adapted to our local growing conditions over time. Heirloom seeds are varieties that have passed down through many generations in a family or community. If you are a beginning gardener, select just a few packets, concentrating on seeds that are categorized as “easy”. These include bean, pea, lettuce, and tomato. Use your library card to “check out” the seed packets. Unlike our books, you do not have to return the seeds you check out, but we highly encourage you to save your seeds to share at the end of the season. Each patron is limited to five packets a day. You might also want to browse our gardening books to learn more about your seeds and soil.

Step Two: Sow

When you get them home, keep your seeds dry until ready to plant. Follow planting instructions for each variety, noting when and how deep to plant. Review a planting chart for our area. Some plants have to be started indoors and transplanted after the last frost date. In our area this is May 25th. Gardening is a great outdoor family activity and a way to reduce the stress of a long work day. Caring for plants and watching them grow is a very fulfilling activity. 

Step Three: Share

Help us keep our seed library going! If you would like to save seeds to share back to the library, make sure to save seeds from your strongest, tastiest and most vigorous plants. For plants with seeds that grow in pods or on the outside of the plant, allow the seeds to dry on the plant and collect them before they break open. These include flowers, herbs, beans, carrots. For plants with seeds that grow inside the flesh of the fruit, the seeds will need to be rinsed off and dried thoroughly. These include tomato, watermelon and squash. The library has books on seed saving, and you can also find more information from Seed Savers, Salt Spring Seeds, and Sow Right Seeds. Save some seeds for yourself, and return a portion back to us, and watch our community grow!

Books on Seed Saving

Image for "The Seed Saving Handbook"

The Seed Saving Handbook

Most Green-thumbed people at one point decide it's time to start saving their own seeds. Raising your own seed is extremely gratifying. Even after 20 years, I find it exciting and rewarding. The best part of all is sharing the harvest with friends and family. Healthy plants come from healthy seed. Seeds you collect yourself, you can watch germinate, turn into a seed-ling then maturing into incredible tasting food. It's truly the miracle of life. 

I'd like to share with you my proven strategy of seed saving. This compact guide will give you wonderful results. Save and grow food better adapted to local insects, parasites and diseases than "modern" varieties. Looks, smells, and tastes much better! Practical advice from an experienced Urban Hillbilly. 
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The Seed Garden

Filled with advice for the home gardener and the more seasoned horticulturist alike, The Seed Garden: The Art and Practice of Seed Saving provides straightforward instruction on collecting seed that is true-to-type and ready for sowing in next year’s garden. In this comprehensive book, Seed Savers Exchange, one of the foremost American authorities on the subject, and the Organic Seed Alliance bring together decades of knowledge to demystify the time-honored tradition of saving the seed of more than seventy-five coveted vegetable and herb crops—from heirloom tomatoes and long-favored varieties of beans, lettuces, and cabbages to centuries-old varieties of peppers and grains.

With clear instructions, lush photographs, and easy-to-comprehend profiles on individual vegetable crops, this book not only teaches us how to go about conserving these important varieties for future generations and for planting out in next year’s garden, it also provides a deeper understanding of the importance of saving these genetically valuable varieties of vegetables that have evolved over the centuries through careful selection by farmers and home gardeners.
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Seed to Seed

Seed to Seed is a complete seed-saving guide that describes specific techniques for saving the seeds of 160 different vegetables. This book contains detailed information about each vegetable, including its botanical classification, flower structure and means of pollination, required population size, isolation distance, techniques for caging or hand-pollination, and also the proper methods for harvesting, drying, cleaning, and storing the seeds.

Seed to Seed is widely acknowledged as the best guide available for home gardeners to learn effective ways to produce and store seeds on a small scale. The author has grown seed crops of every vegetable featured in the book, and has thoroughly researched and tested all of the techniques she recommends for the home garden.
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Survival Seeds

Survival food will only get you so far. Once it runs out, you're on your own when it comes to sourcing food for yourself and your family. Survival seeds can be used to plant a survival garden that will ensure you have a long-term renewable source of healthy food.
Learning to grow and save heirloom seeds could be the difference between living a long, healthy life and starving to death in an extended emergency. Survival Seeds: The Heirloom Seed Saving Handbook gives you the knowledge needed to grow and collect seeds from 40 different types of fruit and vegetables.
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Saving Our Seeds

Seed activist Bevin Cohen takes a deep dive into the hows and whys of the modern seed saving movement. A great how-to guide, leading the reader step by step through the process of saving their seeds from 43 different crops; from adzuki beans to wheat and everything in between. Seed savers of all levels will benefit from Bevin's easy to follow explanations on important techniques such as hand pollination, isolation, vernalization and even basic flower structure.

A book like this would not be complete without stories that honor the many gardeners, farmers and seed keepers that have dedicated their lives to stewarding these heritage varieties. Within these pages, the seed keepers themselves share their stories and help the reader to understand the importance of SAVING OUR SEEDS.
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Gardening Titles

Image for "Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots"

Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots

In her newest book, Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots, she presents 12 spirited, easy-to-implement ideas for theme gardens that parents and kids can grow together. Illustrated throughout by the author's own lyrical watercolors, each garden includes a plan, the planting recipe -- seeds, seedlings, and growing instructions spelled out step-by-step -- and activities. There's the Pizza Patch , a giant-size wheel garden planted in "slices" of tomatoes, zucchini, oregano, and basil. A Flowery Maze to get lost in. A Moon Garden of night-blooming flowers, including a moonflower tent. And Mother Nature's Medicine Chest. Discovery Walks teach kids how the gardens work, and a chapter on gardening basics includes a child-friendly 10-Minute Plan for planting and maintenance, plus a list of the top 20 plants guaranteed to make gardeners out of kids.
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The New Heirloom Garden

In The New Heirloom Garden, award-winning food and garden writer Ellen Ecker Ogden guides you to designing and harvesting from your own kitchen garden, with expert advice, twelve themed garden designs, and sensible tips for a successful harvest. Each design includes an illustrated layout based on a historical garden with a detailed plant key featuring the best-tasting heirloom vegetables you can grow. Discover the unique stories behind the fruits, vegetables, herbs, and flowers that have been growing in gardens for centuries, and why seed saving is vital to maintain food diversity.
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The Little Veggie Patch Co. DIY Garden Projects

The Little Veggie Patch DIY Garden Projects includes over 38 of their best projects for those young and old wanting to transform their outdoor living space. It is broken into 6 categories from Kids, Recycled/Upcyled, X-Factor, Vertical Gardening, Gardening basics and Kitchen, and includes a variety of projects for experienced handy folk to quirky ideas that will involve the youngest members of the family. Projects range from the incredibly quick and simple, such as a self-watering milk-carton planter, how to grow micro-herbs and milk-crate planter boxes to large-scale building projects such as making vertical gardens from pallets and how to build an ultimate playhouse from recycled apple crates. Complete with a collection of recipes for what to do with produce in the kitchen truly makes this the ultimate gardeners companion. Written in a personable, approachable style with stories to accompany each project as well as clear step-by-step instructions with colorful photographs to match, The Little Veggie Patch crew will inspire the green-thumb in every reader.
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Mastering the Art of Flower Gardening

This gorgeously illustrated book by Matt Mattus is based on decades of first-hand experience in his own garden—every variety or cultivar presented is one that he has personally tested and grown. Mattus sets you up for success by first providing everything you need to know about starting seeds, soil, sowing, hardening off, transplanting, plugs, growing on, cutting, and saving seed. Then you'll find tips for growing over 100 different annuals from seed and 12 types of spring and summer bulbs—all based on his hands-on experience, going beyond the information available on the seed packet. Every one of the hundreds of stunning photographs is taken personally by Mattus from the flowers growing on his own farm in Massachusetts.
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Gardening Indoors with Soil & Hydroponics

From back cover: A best seller since 1986, now expanded and completely rewritten with all new information! More than 670 full color photos, drawings, charts and graphs illustrate every detail of this authoritative easy-to-understand book. Numerous simple cultivation solutions make it appealing to novice gardeners. Seasoned gardeners are also able to find answers to all their questions. Discover how to achieve the biggest best yields even with limited space and a small budget. Learn how to grow while taking an exclusive photo tour of some of the most interesting indoor gardens and greenhouses in the world.
Image for "All New Square Foot Gardening, Second Edition"

All New Square Foot Gardening, Second Edition

Rapidly increasing in popularity, square foot gardening is the most practical, foolproof way to grow a home garden. That explains why author and gardening innovator Mel Bartholomew has sold more than two million books describing how to become a successful DIY square foot gardener. Now, with the publication of All New Square Foot Gardening, Second Edition, the essential guide to his unique step-by-step method has become even better. Mel developed his techniques back in the early 1980s and has been teaching them throughout the world ever since. In the process, he has made improvements and refinements and continually adapted his practices to keep pace with modern times. In this new volume, Bartholomew furthers his discussion on one of the most popular gardening trends today: vertical gardening. He also explains how you can make gardening fun for kids by teaching them the square foot method. Finally, an expanded section on pest control helps you protect your precious produce. Rich with new full-color images and updated tips for selecting materials, this beautiful new edition is perfect for brand-new gardeners as well as the millions of square foot gardeners who are already dedicated to Mel’s industry-changing insights.
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Gardening Lab for Kids

A refreshing source of ideas to help your children learn to grow their own patch of earth, Gardening Lab for Kids encourages children to get outside and enjoy nature. This fun and creative book features 52 plant-related activities set into weekly lessons, beginning with learning to read maps to find your heat zone, moving through seeds, soil, composting, and then creating garden art and appreciating your natural surroundings. Author Renata Fossen Brown guides your family through fun activities that are also lessons about botany, ecology, the seasons, food, patience, insects, eating, and cooking.
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The Month-by-Month Gardening Guide

To be a successful gardener, you need to know two things: how to do something and when to do it. Both concepts are thoroughly tackled in The Month-By-Month Gardening Guide. This comprehensive approach to gardening guides home gardeners—whether you are growing vegetables, flowers, or houseplants—through a year of growing. Throughout, the emphasis is on organic, wildlife-friendly techniques. By following the guidance detailed in this hardworking primer, you’ll be well on your way to a beautiful and bountiful garden that will provide pleasure throughout the year.
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