Amorelle Dempster of Slow Food Hunter Valley joined the session to speak about the two community seed saving projects the group coordinates – their heritage seed saving project and the Maitland Seed Library.

The Maitland Seed Library is a wonderful collaboration between Slow Food Hunter Valley and Maitland City Council Libraries. It began in early 2020, just as we went into our first lockdown. The seed from the seed library is free and available at the Maitland City Council Libraries in Maitland, East Maitland, Rutherford and Thornton. The Heritage Seed Saving Project is focused on saving heritage varieties. Phase 1 is pumpkins and squashes. Excess seeds collected from this project is donated to the Maitland Seed Library.

We also talked about how to be successful Seed Saving in Small Spaces.

Many of us are growing in limited spaces, whether that’s in a suburban backyard or on an apartment balcony. The space available for seed saving can also be limited by how much time we have to devote to it. So what are the issues and what are our options for dealing with them?
We spoke about the pros and cons of various approaches as well as what the issues and advantages were of small space seed growing.