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Seed Saving/Seed Sharing

A drop-off location for your extra seeds is available at the Food Forest Little Library. Tentative future locations include some community gardens, and a couple of porch locations throughout Evanston.

Please plan to share your seeds from this year’s garden with us. 

We are asking that after you plant your garden, please donate your unused seeds in their original packet to Edible Evanston. We will ensure the seeds are carefully stored to protect the viability, so you don’t need to worry about that.

You probably already know that Edible Evanston has hosted an annual Seed Swap in the late winter/ early spring for the last few years. The majority of the seeds we make available are from seed companies who send us their seeds from the previous year at a very discounted rate or for free. Seed companies have been struggling this year to keep up with orders for all the EXCELLENT people growing bigger, better, new gardens. While we see more gardeners in the world as a wonderful thing, we are looking ahead to 2021. We want to be able to host our annual seed swap next February or March, but we think our seed company partners might not have the packets to donate to us like they have had in the past.

We are planning now for the seed swap to be more of a “swap” than it has in years past. Please plan to share your seeds from this year’s garden with us. A pack of tomato seeds can have 50 seeds, but very few gardeners in Evanston have space for 50 tomato plants (as much as we might wish we did).

We will also be offering classes this year (likely virtually) on saving seeds from different plants. It’s fun and easy to harvest lots of viable seed from peas, beans, lettuce, tomatoes and many other plants, but there are things you need to know first. Read this primer. Watch Edible Evanston’s calendar and your email to be sure not to miss these classes.