Little Free Seed Exchange

Since I have been home and not working in a traditional sense, I have become creative in ways to achieve my gardening goals. In an earlier post I showcased the very first Iris Swap in my community, hosted in my front yard. An idea I came up with one day while flipping through the Flower Catalog I really shouldn’t splurge on.

Around the same time, I was also trying to be as frugal as I possibly could while ordering seeds for our kitchen garden. Every year it’s the same, I order too many seeds, I don’t even have room to plant them all. I somehow also wind up buying some plants at the local Farm Stands. My gardening habits were becoming expensive. What did other folks do for seeds?

All of these thoughts are bouncing through my head as I take the long way home on a country road. Something is coming into focus as I’m riding along, a small box on a post with a glass door on the front. As I get closer, I realize it’s one of those Little Free Libraries. Never actually seen one before coming upon this one on my long way around. Clever, I thought, what a neat idea for the neighborhood.

I pull into my little town and make the right after the Town Library. This is why we don’t have a Free Library in our town, we’re lucky enough to have a branch right here on Main Street. Still thinking about that Little Free Library, I have a new thought, what if you did the same thing with seeds? A cute little box on a post with a glass door, my idea coming in to focus, I head into the house to do some googling.

Come to find out, this is not a new idea! Folks were already sharing seeds all over the country in Seed Exchanges, beautiful wooden boxes with glass doors on the front. Yes! I want to do this! So I start searching for that beautiful wooden box on a post, and folks, it’s not cheap. I guess I wasn’t surprised, but I was a little disappointed I couldn’t afford a Little Free Seed Exchange.

Wait a minute, what am I thinking? It’s supposed to be Free, does it have to be a beautiful wooden box with a glass door on the front with a sweet latch to keep it closed? No, it most certainly doesn’t. What did I really need to make this happen? A container to hold seeds with a lid that shuts tight to keep out the elements. Pretty simple.

So that’s exactly what I did. I went out and bought a nice plastic container with a lid for less than $10. It was actually a whole set, so I kept the smaller ones for kitchen use and took the largest container for the exchange. A simple label on the lid reads, Little Free Seed Exchange. I placed it on my Garden Stand facing the town library.

Anyone can join in, you don’t need a fancy box, just a little plastic container and a simple label. A post on Social Media usually does the trick, and folks will be happy to come and add or take from your own Little Free Seed Exchange 🌱

#KeepGrowing