Have you ever donated seed to CSS? You’ll have seen that we’ve been in an evolving effort to make the process as smooth as possible.
All donations of seed need to be accompanied by a Seed Passport.
☝️ A Seed Passport is a form you fill in when you donate seed, that gives us all the information we need to be able to sort the seed and give information to new growers. This is what’s necessary to create a living seed bank with locally-adapted seed! We have printed copies at all our events and at our working bees.
Other than the very important step of filling in a Seed Passport, please do your best to follow this simple guide to best practice for donating seed.
🌱 Process your seed before donating as best as possible.
This means removing seed casing and any plant material as much as possible. If you don’t know how to do this well, come along to a winnowing and cleaning workshop, or just come and ask for a demo at a Seedy Session! If you’d like to donate seed but don’t have time or knowledge on how to clean seed properly, still bring it along, there’s a chance we’ll still accept it.
🌱 Determine whether your seed is true-to-type or not.
Some plants will cross–pollinate if they are too close together. While this isn’t a problem per se, it does mean that you may not be donating what you think you are donating if there are plants that will breed with the plant you’re collecting seeds from. If you know what cross-pollinates and how to exclude plants that need isolation to produce true-to-type seed, you will know what you are donating. It’s good to start donating with seed from plants that don’t cross-pollinate, and work your way up to those that need special treatment. To learn more about cross-pollination, come along to a seed saving workshop.
🌱 What else?
- Tomato brown rugose virus referral
- Guidance around donating seed you didn’t grow