Seed Library

BY KIMBERLY MAYER

The last time I went to the library I returned a couple overdue books and picked up a packet of seeds. Who knew? While seed saving has been done for 10,000 years, it has only recently become available at many public libraries, including ours. Started and maintained by Jessa Madosky and Nancy Best at San Juan Island Grange, the seed library was moved to the public library this spring. Housed in small manilla and craft paper envelopes in a wooden card catalog many of us will recall, not much space is taken. The whole thing is wonderfully old fashioned.

Vegetables, fruit, herbs, flower, and wildflower. No sign out is necessary, and it’s free.

There’s a natural economy in seed saving. Here, packed in quantities suitable for a row in a home garden, are seeds from organic, open-pollinated gardens, already proven successful in our area. Preserving heirloom varieties ensures better flavor, encourages disease resistance, and helps combat seed monocultures where four giant companies control more than 60% of the world’s seeds, threatening our global food supply.

The seeds I “borrowed” are Heritage Waldron Kale. After coming home from the library I planted them in a tray, and in a couple weeks three or four showed their heads and I cheered. Today as I write, the tray is populated with more seedlings than I can count, looking like a Lilliputian field of four-leaf clover. This is what happens when you stare at a tray or a small plot for a period of time: it becomes your world. As any gardener will tell you, when you raise them you begin to refer to them as your “babies.”

Seeds, as Thor Hanson remarks in his book The Triumph of Seeds, “… are quite literally the stuff and staff of life.” These seeds were so small they were but mere specks. Yet in each one, an embryo plant with a supply of food (starch, protein, oils) to get it on its way. “A baby in a box,” Hanson calls it. It’s not time yet to transplant my seedlings.

Having come of age in a small rural town without a bookstore, the library meant everything to us. Today with services expanding into realms librarians of old never dreamed of, the library means everything once again. Along with the community-based collections of seeds, Assistant Director of San Juan Island Library, Anthony Morris showed me some of what else the library has been lending lately: birdwatching equipment, a State Park Pass, a pass for two to the art museum, gardening tools, culinary tools, and a telescope.

Who knew that too?

Originally published in The Journal of the San Juan Islands 6/19/24