By CLAIRE SCHILLER
For Salt Spring Seedy Saturday
This year will mark the 30th anniversary of Salt Spring’s Seedy Saturday. Island Natural Growers is happy to continue organizing this beloved annual event that brings some light to the winter season.
The event will be held at the Salt Spring Farmers’ Institute (351 Rainbow Rd.) on Saturday-Sunday, Feb. 22 and 23.
Join us on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. for the main event. There will be local seed and plant producers, fruit and nut tree growers, beekeeping supplies, seed exchange table, community groups and local agriculture promoters from Salt Spring and Vancouver Island.
A free educational workshop series will be held throughout the day. Presenters include Dan Jason of Salt Spring Seeds, Erinanne Harper of Salt Spring Herbs, and Ross McLeod of the Farmers’ Institute. Local bakers Love’s Galettes and Nance Bakes will be selling treats, and coffee and tea will be available for purchase. Entry is $5 at the door.
The ever-popular seed exchange table welcomes fresh, clean, open-pollinated seed saved from your garden to exchange or donate. If you can package your own seed even better! Include the variety, year saved and any other useful information (e.g. percentage of germination). Old, hybrid or commercially packaged seed is not accepted.
We are seeking someone to share organizing tasks for this year’s seed exchange table with our longstanding volunteer Michele Layard. Preparing the seed exchange table is a fun annual task that is an important part of our event. If you are interested in getting involved with this, please contact Michele at mlayard@shaw.ca. We are always looking for volunteers to fill other roles on the day of the event. If you’d like to sign up you can do so online through our Facebook page or by emailing ssiseedysaturday@gmail.com.
Continuing on Sunday, Feb. 23 is our extended free educational workshop series. Dig deeper into specific topics with these longer workshops (pre-registration is required). The first topic is Foundations of Soil Management for the Islands Region presented by DeLisa Lewis, the lead farmer at Green Fire Farm in Duncan and research associate at the Sustainable Landscapes Agriculture Lab, UBC. This workshop is for farmers and food growers with an interest in better understanding and applying the basics of soil fertility, soil sampling and soil health indicators to better manage their soils. It will cover the foundations of soil fertility management and explore resources and tools available to you in this region, including how and why to take samples and how to choose a soil laboratory for analysis.
The second workshop of the day is Simply Seed Saving presented by Ben Corno and Kaleigh Barton. Corno and Barton owned and operated Heavenly Roots farm and are members of the BC Eco Seed Co-op, with over 10 years of growing experience. This information-packed session will teach you seed saving from start to finish. They will cover types of plants to grow, harvesting techniques, seed cleaning methods, timing for collecting seed and so much more.
If you wish to participate in the event as a vendor or exhibitor and have not yet registered, please contact me, Claire Schiller, at ssiseedysaturday@gmail.com.