A Quick Update

Hello seedy folks! I’ve been busy like a bee over here the past month, processing the last of the seeds (thankfully due to the help of some fabulous growers, we did get some seed to offer for next year, despite my lack of a garden in 2013!).

Seeds of Diversity’s AGM

SaskroadI also made the six hour drive to Saskatoon for Seeds of Diversity’s annual general meeting, as I sit on the board of directors. It was three days jam packed with meetings (great meetings – we have some fabulous things coming up for our members!), but possibly most exciting, we got to visit Plant Gene Resources Canada, including their seed vault. PGRC is the national seed & gene bank here in Canada, so needless to say for a seed and garden nut like me it was like visiting the holy grail of, well, seeds! The curator, Axel, gave us the tour and it was wonderful to be able to see what they were doing, how, and to drool a bit at the seed vaults.

I’ll be adding a post all about our trip to PGRC in a bit, which is also slated to appear in the Seeds of Diversity magazine for our spring issue, so stay tuned on that!

On The Technical Side Of Things

I’m also suffering from a bit of a data loss at the moment – the latest version of the seed bank’s holdings was unfortunately corrupted, which in turn has made it so I have to reconstruct a good chunk of said database. Let’s just say the backup failed and leave it at that.

Anyhow, with the number of seeds coming in at the moment, it’s a bit of a job, so I’ve been doing it in bits and pieces when I have time. Once I get that up and running I’ll be uploading the latest version, as well as seeds that will be available for distribution this year.

The Mailing List

You guys just keep joining! I know the list has been very, very light this year, but I fully plan to rectify that by shooting out a quick message to all the members of the list when the seeds are up for distribution (I’ll have some lower quantities, so those on the mailing list will get first crack at them before I release them to the general public!), and then in 2014 we’ll be back to our quarterly newsletters.

2014 Plans – Growers, Growouts, & More!

Not having the database means that figuring out which seeds need growing out for 2014 is happening a bit later than expected, but in a few weeks I plan to have all the information available, and of course I’ll be looking for my helpful gardeners to grow out varieties that I won’t have room for/my climate doesn’t allow for.

I’m also busily planning on my fabulous new garden for 2014! The house we moved into might be small, but the huge yard makes up for that. Which means, I get to turn just about a third of it into fabulous garden space! I’m intensely excited to have this much room to build a garden into – while Victoria gave me the long growing season, the space limitations really hampered how much I was able to grow out. Edmonton’s season might be shorter, but the big, full sun yard more than makes up for it.

That’s all for now – thanks for everybody’s continued support for this little project, and for everybody who sent in seeds to be banked. And an extra big thank you to my wonderful, amazing growers who help out every year by donating their time and garden space to ensure that this bank continues to be able to offer seed to the public.