Gardeners! Get to Seedy Saturday

By Kathryn Pankowski

One of the most useful things you can do for your garden, big or small, in February is to leave it to fend for itself for a day, and take yourself off to Seedy Saturday on February 20, 10-4 at the Victoria Conference Centre.

Why?

I’ve gone every year (full disclosure: I also volunteer at it) for more years than I care to count up, and here are my top 10 reasons:

The talks

Every year there’s a huge choice of talks by local experts. This year you can choose from 16, ranging from basic information for beginners (how to plant a seed, how to save seeds for next year) to topics for more experienced gardeners (how to help your veg patch cope with the increasingly extreme weather). With a bit of clever planning, you can get to 3 or 4 and still have time to shop for seeds.

It’s a bargain

Admission is $7, and hasn’t gone up for years. That’s pretty cheap education.

You’ll never see more island seed and plant vendors in one place

At Seedy Saturday, you can shop dozens of stalls set up by local nurseries and seed producers. Its “one-stop shopping”, your chance to efficiently ‘visit’ businesses spread out across the islands – and especially useful for the many James Bay residents who don’t keep a car.

Nobody will try to sell you a hot tub

Not that I have any objection to hot tubs in the right place, mind you, but they don’t fall under my definition of “gardening”. Seedy Saturday –unlike many garden shows-keeps a firm grip on what vendors can offer: seeds, plants, tools, soil amendments, local food, information about local gardening events and classes. That’s it. You don’t have to wade through acres of garden tat.

You can get expert advice

Not only are the Master Gardeners there, with loads of reference books in tow, but there’s pretty much an expert in every booth. The people selling the seeds and plants are the people who grew them and, especially towards the end of the day when things have quieted down a bit, they are quite happy to give advice about growing their wares successfully in local conditions.

You can trade seeds and books

Trade your surplus saved seed and outgrown gardening books for new and exciting seeds and books. If you don’t have anything to trade, you can buy items from both exchanges at very modest prices.

It’s local

The vendors are pretty much all small businesses based in the islands, so buying plants and seeds here supports our neighbours and the local economy. There’s an even more local connection: Victoria Seedy Saturday is put on by the James Bay Market Society; proceeds from the event help get our neighbourhood market up and running each year.

It’s green

Seedy Saturday is a garden show for people who want to garden in a planet-friendly way. It’s for the organic, nature-friendly type of gardener, not the sort that talks about impeccable lawns while brandishing a bottle of weed killer.

It may lead you down strange (garden) paths

Seedy Saturday includes gardeners with many different passions. You may run across someone raising old roses from seed next to someone growing greens and fish in an aquaponics system. You may intend only to shop for, say, medicinal herb plants, and suddenly find yourself overwhelmed by a desire to keep honeybees. Or grow an orange tree. Or install a rain garden. I left my last Seedy Saturday with pockets bulging with knobbly South American edible tubers.  You never know.

It’s fun

There are few sounds so joyful as hundreds of gardeners turned loose in early spring in a large room full of seeds. It’s even more fun if you volunteer. Interested? Contact Seedy Saturday at vicseedysat@gmail.com or leave a message at 250.381.5323. You don’t need to be a skilled gardener to volunteer; there are lots of jobs, such as stamping hands and distributing programs, that require no gardening knowledge whatsoever.

For more information, visit the James Bay Market Society website http://jamesbaymarket.com/SeedySaturday/