More than 2,000 budding gardeners and local food advocates dug into the 21st annual Seedy Saturday in Victoria this weekend.
The event, at the Victoria Conference Centre, featured an old-fashioned community seed exchange as well as seed and garden vendors and speakers from the Island and local farms.
“A lot of networking between people involved in local food security and sustainability goes on here,” said organizer Pat McGuire, from the James Bay Market Society.
At the seed exchange table, Gillian Rowan and her family helped people sort bags of seeds into small packets to trade or buy for a loonie each.
“What I really loved this year is that we got lots of people who said they got their original seeds here,” said Rowan, adding that in the 10 years she’s helped with the exchange she’s seen a major shift from flowers to vegetables. “More and more people are growing their own vegetables.”
One of them is Sarah Hermsen, who brought her five-year-old daughter Kalika to the event to trade and buy seeds for their garden. “It’s important to me to learn about gardening and food security and pass that onto my kids,” said Hermsen, who lives on the Tsawout First Nation in Saanich and uses the community garden. She also took a city food-growing course at Royal Roads University.
“We eat organic and non-GMO so it’s pretty important to be able to grow some of our own food,” said Hermsen, who picked up a strawberry starter and seeds for peas, camas and chard.
Marsha Goldberg has been cultivating organic heritage seeds on her Saltspring Island farm for more than 20 years.
“Our specialty is tomatoes, there’s so much to know, and peppers and eggplants and things that can grow in cooler climates,” said Goldberg at the Eagleridge Seeds table, where she gave gardening tips to customers and had a petition to protect heritage and heirloom seeds from being regulated and patented.
“This is a time-honoured tradition. We would not have any food at all if farmers didn’t share and exchange seeds,” she said.
-thumb.png;w=120;h=80;mode=crop)