How To Source Budget-Friendly Seeds
Growing vegetables at home has been both an enjoyable pastime and a necessary food source for families for many years. Due to the ongoing pandemic, this is becoming a lifeline for some families who are now experiencing financial pressure due to the economic downturn. Food banks are under huge pressure to provide for more households as job insecurity threatens many industries. However, the increase in time at home has given a number of families the opportunity to experiment with growing their own fruit and vegetables. Although seeds can be expensive, there are a number of ways to obtain budget-friendly seeds. So dig out those gardening gloves and get sowing!
Online Seed Sources
The Heritage Seed Library is the largest UK based online service. It specialises in conserving unusual vegetable varieties that are no longer widely available. With a membership, you have access to their seed list and are sent some free seeds each year. However, to help feed a family, it would be better to begin with varieties that are easy to grow and flourish in most soil types.
Seed Sovereignty is another website which is a fantastic resource, providing information on ‘everything seedy’. They can offer advice on the whole shebang, from planting to harvest and even provide information on UK seed libraries near you. If there isn’t a resource close by, a good place to start is Facebook. You can often discover allotment or gardening groups willing to part with or swap some of their seeds or seedlings.
Seed Of Hope
Seed libraries are still relatively new here in the UK. They have become very popular in the US and there are some very well organised groups such as Up Beet! which offer great resources and advice for the surrounding communities. The recent pandemic is causing a surge in interest in Britain, and more families are now realising the advantages (financial and hedonistic) of starting a vegetable plot at home.
Starting A Seed Library
If you cannot locate a nearby seed library, perhaps you’d like to consider starting your own. It takes little time and effort to set up and could become a valuable resource for the neighbourhood. The best location is usually a community centre or library, where residents have easy access. You will need something to house your collection; the container you choose can be as basic or fancy as you wish. You can build something from salvaged wood or opt for an old chest of drawers; whatever works for you and your community will be perfect.
You’ll then need to begin the collection. Making connections with local gardeners and allotment owners can be the source of a huge variety of ‘spare’ seeds to start you off. Organise them alphabetically under common names, perhaps including a herb or flower category if you so wish. This makes it easy for people to locate what they’re looking for. The idea is that people ‘borrow’ seeds from the library at planting time and at the end of the growing season, they cultivate seeds from their own crops and replace the seeds they took for others to benefit from in next year’s harvest.
Additional Seed Sources
Signing up for seed catalogues is another great way to source some free seeds – new customers are often enticed by freebies or vouchers.
If you plant open-pollinated, heirloom seeds you can harvest and save your own seeds for the following year. You can also spread the love by sharing some of your carefully cultivated seeds with other keen growers using the seed library.
Growing your own vegetables is not only a satisfying and interesting hobby, but you can reap financial as well as nutritional rewards and help ease the cost of feeding your family.
