Helping local gardeners get a head start on the 2010 gardening season is why gardening and food enthusiasts organized Seedy Sunday, a seed swap and education day at Market Square.
Dozens of gardeners and over a dozen seed, horticultural and food vendors converged on the space to celebrate the beginning of planting flowers, vegetables and fruit. The Sudbury Food Connections Network, a non-profit organization, dedicated to promoting more local food production and consumption, organized the event. It is a first for the city, organizers said.
“This is an excellent idea,” Madeleine Genier, a director of the Sudbury Horticultural Society, said. She was helping to organize tables of seed packets so that people could swap their favourite seeds for someone else's packets. As long as a person brought in at least five packets of seeds that are open pollinated, or where the seed can be saved for next year from the plant, they could take part in the exchange, she said.
“We have tried it (a seed exchange) on a small scale before just amongst our members but this is a much bigger event,” she said. Genier loves flowers. She is responsible for the flower garden at the CNIB on York Street that is managed by the Sudbury Horticultural Society.
Suzanne Hanna, a director of the Ontario Horticultural Society, lives in Sault Ste. Marie. Her local horticultural association has organized similar events for the past three years.
“I am here with two other Soo residents to here to help Sudbury people organize this. We had our own event yesterday at the cafeteria at Soo College and it drew 500 people and 35 vendors,” Hanna noted. She said over time, she expected Seedy Sunday here could rival the Sudbury Earth Day event held later in April on Earth Day.
Some of the vendors and organizations participating included:
- Sudbury Master Gardeners
- Sudbury Horticultural Society
- Seeds of Diversity
- Sudbury Food Connections
- Coalition For A Liveable Sudbury
- Good Food Box
- Canadian Diabetes Association
- Douglas Apiaries
- Eat Local Sudbury
- Northern Flavours
- Foodshed Project
Doreen Ojala, a member of the Sudbury Food Connections Network, said the idea behind the day was to encourage local gardeners and related organizations to grow heritage varieties and to start saving seeds.
“We want to focus on what plants are adaptable to our local climate and growing conditions,” she said.
She noted 2010 was designated by the United Nations as the International Year of Biodiversity and that Sudbury residents could help that effort by growing hardy plants here and saving the seeds for future plantings.
Though themain action was the seed exchange held in the morning, a number of speakers continued throughout the afternoon on topics such as the city's own biodiversity plan, our changing climate, bee keeping and how to grow plants in the north. People were able to purchase seeds and other items from vendors present.
For more information, visit www.foodshedproject.ca, or call 675-3894. For information on the Sudbury Horticultural Society visit www.sudburyhorticulturalsociety.ca.
