Gardeners consider the last Saturday of January to be National Seed Swap Day. Yet seed swaps occur any time, usually during the late winter and spring. During a seed swap, you get the opportunity to trade seeds, stories, tips & tricks, and even cuttings or plants with your fellow local gardeners.

My local library held a seed swap on National Seed Swap Day. One week later, a local garden magazine held their annual seed swap in my state. I got the opportunity to attend the latter. Gardeners from all over the local area spent a wonderful, sunny afternoon together sharing stories about our gardens, seeds, and listening to expert presentations on seed starting and transplanting those seedlings outside.

What Seed Swaps Offer

There’s no better way to increase your home seed library and try something unique in your garden. But a seed swap can offer so much more than just seeds. Here are a few things I got out of the seed swap I attended last weekend.

Seeds!

Ok, let’s start with the obvious. You get seeds! Some seed exchanges cost money to attend, but others don’t. (Event organizers may charge attendees to earn some money for their business, garden club, or charity.) Library seed exchanges are generally free and can be a wonderful way to get free seeds. But even if you have to pay to attend, the amount you spend is pennies compared to the bounty you will bring home.

I paid $40 a ticket for the privilege of attending one 70 person event and brought home 36 packages of seeds. Taking the lowest price of a packet of seeds these days (about $1.99 U.S.), that’s at least $71.64 that I would have spent buying these seeds commercially. Plus, many of the seeds I brought home were varieties not sold by local distributers, or rarer and even imperiled varieties that I would have spent much more than $1.99 to purchase.

You won’t just find home-grown seeds gathered by local gardeners at an exchange. You will also likely find commercial seed packets that have never been opened before, or others that have but still have seeds left. How many rows of beans do you really need in a year, after all? And once you’ve planted your perennial flower bed, why would you keep the seeds when they’ll come back each year? Seed swaps are a great way to trade leftover seed packets for something new to you.

Varieties of Plants From & For Your Local Area

Keeping with the seed theme, seeds shared at a seed exchange are more likely to have been tested in your local environment. When you buy seeds from a retailer, even in your local hardware store or nursery, you often have no way of knowing where the seeds in that packet came from. Seed companies distribute their seeds as far and as wide as they can manage in order to increase their profits. After all, it’s a business. They’re looking to make money. The easiest way to do that is reach a large number of customers.

Unfortunately for gardeners, this means that the seeds that we sow may not be adapted to our local area. These seeds may want a longer growing season, or a particular kind of soil, or a warmer (or cooler) air and soil temperature. Without the right growing conditions that the seeds adapted to, they may not produce well, if they germinate at all.

Seeds adapted to the local area are in their prime environment to produce the best harvests for the maximum amount of time. Over time, you might be able to adapt non-local plants to your local environment with successive seed-saving of your own harvests (acclimatization), but that takes place over years, even decades.

Seeds you pick up from a seed swap are more likely to come from your gardening neighbors. As such, they’ll produce better for your local area than seeds which shipped from a completely different climate than your own.

Cuttings & Small Plants

As mentioned earlier, some seed swaps will allow cuttings or even plants at their events. Don’t know what to do with all those African violets or prayer plant vines that just. will. not. stop. expanding? Make cuttings and bring them to your local seed swap!

I picked up a spider plant baby at my local seed swap. Alas, my last (giant!) spider plant died when I went away to college. Oops! I’m so happy to finally have another!

Some places will also organize a plant swap later in the year when seed swapping is less practical (since the garden is in full swing by that point).

Social Opportunities & Networking

Who couldn’t use more friends?! I know I could. A seed swap is a great way to get out of the house and meet with local people who share a similar love of gardening as you do. Unlike a garden club or community outreach, there’s no long-term commitment required. And that can be a big draw to some of us!

Post-COVID, it’s difficult for a lot of us to get back into the habit of being social with one another. A seed swap is the perfect opportunity to ease into socializing with others again. Who knows?! You might make a new friend or open some doors and opportunities that you never knew were there.

Got kids? Bring them along! A seed exchange is an excellent family outing. Share your love of gardening with your kiddos and maybe they’ll take an interest in helping you out in the garden this summer. It’s an excellent learning opportunity for younger minds, too. After all, what is gardening but a hands-on science lesson? Biology, chemistry, horticulture, virology, and so much more can STEM (pun intended) from an interest in gardening.

Garden Advice from Experts (and Amateurs!)

Kids aren’t the only one learning at a seed exchange. So will you! If you’re lucky, your seed exchange may also include demonstrations, discussions, or lectures. Some of the smartest minds in your area may give talks on gardening topics.

The seed swap I recently attended included the brilliant Carol Allen who works as an Instructor of Biology and Biodiversity at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Her lecture on Seed Mixes and Substrates was incredibly interesting. Although I’ve been starting my seeds indoors for years, I learned quite a lot from her hour-long presentation.

Don’t discount the knowledge of someone who may just be your neighbor down the street. Amateurs know a thing or to too. The world of gardening is so vast, there’s no way any one person can be an expert at everything – even master gardeners. And don’t be afraid to share your own stories too. No one knows that tomato plant that you brought seeds from like you do. Everyone has something to offer at a seed exchange (not just seeds).

Garden Products

Your local seed swap may include door prizes donated by local businesses and artists. And many of those people will be in the room with you. Imagine winning a raffle of a stunning image taken by a local photographer and having her in the room to sign the print for you! (That happened at the seed exchange I attended!)

You could walk away with useful garden products like seed starting mixes, weed barriers, and soil fertilizers completely for free. Local beekeepers may donate honey (my husband was lucky enough to walk away with a jar). Local publishers may donate books to get their authors’ names out there. Garden centers may donate garden tools.

If your community seed swap is not as large as the one I went to, organizers may invite guests to bring garden products to swap. Maybe you have an extra garden trowel lying around because you lost your old one, bought a new one, then found your old favorite lying in the back of a closet. … Not that that’s ever happened to me … (yes, it has). You might give your extra a new home with someone who needs it.

Seed Catalogues

Most of us receive WAY more seed catalogues than we know what to do with. They’re exciting, to be sure. I like to call them holiday magazines for gardeners. Starting in January, or even December, it’s not uncommon for your mailbox to become weighed down by seed magazines, duplicates included.

Once you’ve feasted your eyes on the gorgeous pictures and dreamed away the darker months of winter with thoughts of spring, set the magazines aside. You can bring those magazines to the seed swap to share with others and get your seeds for free or cheap instead. This supports your local community, saves you money, and is way better than having those magazines end up in a landfill. Organizers of the seed swap often recycle the remaining seed catalogues after the event.

Local Garden Businesses & Club Information

Seed swaps are a great place for local businesses and clubs to get their names out there. Events are prime for exactly the kind of people they want to market to. Business owners and garden club members might not be in attendance (or they might!), but fliers can still drum up interest in what they have to offer.

Do You Need to Bring Seeds to a Seed Swap?

This is usually up to the organizers of the event and dependent on how many people they’re expecting. A large seed swap may not require you to bring seeds. Just come and be present (and take some seeds with you when you go!) A smaller group, like one that meets at a local library, might want everyone to bring something. Check with your organizers if you have any questions. After all, they’re probably just delighted you’re interested!

What Kinds of Seeds to Swap

Again, this probably depends on the event organizers. Many organizers want only native plants to limit the spread of invasive weeds. Even if the organizers don’t specify natives only, you should be respectful of your local environment and not bring seeds from any plants on your area’s invasive species list, no matter how tasty they may be (I’m looking at you, Garlic Mustard).

In general, the types of seeds shared at a seed exchange are as you might suspect. Vegetables, fruits, herbs, and flowers, annuals & perennials alike, no matter how exotic or common, all have their place to shine at a seed swap.

Open Pollinated seeds are best for seed swaps. This means that the wind or pollinators like bees and butterflies did the work for you to create your tasty produce. It also means that they’re not hybrids (that you know of). Seeds saved from hybrid plants are a grab bag of genetic material. They could produce exactly what you hope, or they could be a version of the mother or father plant that produced the hybrids to begin with. I plant a hybrid cherry tomato in my garden that I do save seeds from. I do not bring these seeds to seed exchanges because I don’t know what they’re going to get. If you’re going to share hybrids at a seed swap, bring the leftover seeds from the manufacturer, and not seeds you save.

If you allow your plants to open pollinate, you may still get a hybrid. Squashes in particular love to cross-pollinate. Don’t stress it. At a seed swap, it’s generally expected you may get a surprise if you pick up a home-made seed packet. And that’s ok!

How to Package Your Seeds for a Seed Swap

There’s no wrong way to package your seeds for a seed swap. I saw everything under the sun at the seed swap I attended. There are a few general tips and tricks, though, that you might want to keep in mind if you’re bringing seeds you’ve saved from your own garden to share.

Packaging Your Seeds

Think about how you’re going to transport your seeds to the exchange. The last thing you want is your seeds to go everywhere. Having your seeds packaged together makes it easy for people to grab them. Plastic sandwich or snack bags are a good go-to for seed swaps. Just be sure you can label the plastic and that the marker won’t wipe off.

Seed libraries often use small, manilla envelopes to distribute their seeds. You may want to procure some of these packets yourself, especially if you intend to share a lot of seeds. They’re small, easy to write on, and easy to transport.

You can also use simple printer paper to print your own seed packets from your computer. I have a go-to seed packet template that I picked up years ago from a Florida gardener that I’m happy to share. Click on the image below to make it bigger and save or print it.

How Many Seeds Should You Swap?

Think about how large or small your seeds are. The larger the seeds, the larger your package is, and the less of them you may need. The smaller the seeds, the more you can fit in a packet. Don’t go too crazy, though! A general rule of thumb is to place 20 to 30 seeds in a packet. Have more than 30 seeds you want to swap? Divide them into separate packages and bring them along. Chances are more than one attendee will want your seeds. Spread the love.

Write (or Print) Relative Information

Think about the information a gardener is going to want to know about the seeds you’re bringing. How long does it take to grow this plant from seed to maturity? Does it like full sun, partial sun, shade? What kind of soil does it like? How far apart should you plant them? How deep? How tall does it get? A lot of times you can copy this directly from the seed packet you took them from (if you still have it). Sometimes, you may have unique insight to share (for example: this plant did fine in clay soil).

It helps to have a story. Think about the history of your plant. Did a friend give you seeds that you grew and it flourished? Maybe you picked up the originals at a seed library hundreds of miles away, or at a particular historical site. I delivered seeds from my Thomas Jefferson Cayenne Plants to the seed swap and iterated the full story on the seed packet. Tell your plant’s new plant-mom-or-dad all about what makes this seed interesting.

Above All, Have Fun Swapping Seeds & Stories

Don’t forget to have fun while exchanging seeds and stories about your garden. There may be a lot of logistical details in deciding what seeds to swap, gathering them together, and packaging them for the event. But the overall event is going to be a blast.

At the end of the day, you’ll be very glad you went. And you’ll have all those wonderful seeds to look at as you plan your garden for spring.