Bowling Green Seed Exchange is a collaborative, not-for-profit, long-term plant genetics project in the WABBLES area (Warren, Allen, Barren, Butler, Logan, Edmonson, and Simpson counties) of south-central Kentucky, USA.
Volunteers grow plants locally, save their seeds, and contribute them into the exchange. Growers receive seeds for free from the exchange that have had at least one season of local adaptation, and hopefully contribute back to the exchange. The longer this continues, the more locally-adapted the plants should become. Locally-adapted plants generally grow stronger and more resistant to local pests and environmental factors.
Over time we hope to establish open lines of plants that are adapted to our local environment, selected for our preferences, and are overall more robust and easier to grow. In the short run, it's a great way to meet other local growers and to be involved in the lifecycles of plants, not to mention potentially saving money on buying seeds.
Our first box is set up inside at the Community Farmers Market on Nashville Road, which is open Saturdays 8a-1pm and Tuesdays 2-6pm.
Ideally we would like anyone who wants seeds to be able to get them, but we ask that you only take seeds if you are intending to grow them in this area. Apart from that, we're only limited by previous contributions. There is no requirement to contribute back, but we sure hope that you do!
Because we are trying to select for local adaptation, we limit contribution to seeds harvested from plants actually grown in this area. It doesn't matter where the mother plant's seeds came from, if it grew here and produced seed, it's now local!
Anyone who grew a plant can contribute: home gardeners, professional farmers, school garden club, it doesn't matter!
For now, we are accepting any legal seeds from non-invasive plants that were grown in the area. We obviously recommend only contributing seeds from plants you actually enjoyed, as your preference is part of the long-term selection process!
Some suggestions for plants that are easy to grow from/go to seed include beans, squash, cucumbers, melons, tomatoes, chili peppers, and many kinds of flowers.
Since we are trying to adapt to the local environment including climate, please only contribute seeds from plants that you grew outdoors, in the south-central Kentucky area. It doesn't matter if it was in a container, a raised bed, or the ground.
However, plants that reproduce will select over time for how they were grown, so if you spent a lot of time and effort coddling, spraying, and taking care of your plant ... then their offspring will be slightly more adapted to needing coddling, spraying, and lots of care. We highly recommend not trying too hard to grow your plants, beyond providing for their basic needs such as light, good soil, irrigation, etc.
One of this project's goals is to make growing things easier, so the less effort you put in upfront will naturally select for plants that are easier to grow.
There are lots of different methods for doing this, and it's obviously plant-specific, but what we like to do for tomatoes, squash, and peppers is to scoop out the seeds from a fruit we particularly liked, rinse them in a collander while gently mushing them with a finger or spoon. Then we dump the seeds onto a paper towel folded over several times, spread them out gently, write what kind of seeds they are onto the paper towel, and then leave the paper towel somewhere dry and cool for a week or two.
Many types of flowers will produce easily-collectible seeds if you just let them fully dry out on the stalk.
The most important thing for most seeds* is to dry them out as much as possible, as moisture will either cause them to germinate early or spoil.
* Some seeds will die if they dry out completely, like citrus. If you managed to grow citrus to seed outdoors in Kentucky ... we would definitely like to talk with you :-)
Pick up some of our stamped BGSEEDX.ORG seed packets, and write the plant name and variety* (if you know it), as well as the grow year on the packet.
Fill with as many completely dry seeds as you'd like, seal, and return to our box.
* this is probably most important with peppers, as most people do not enjoy hot peppers if they were wanting a sweet one
There are a lot of hangups in modern agriculture about keeping varieties of plants "pure". If you are harvesting 100s of acres of a plant with industrial machinery, then it's obviously important to have exact characteristics that do not randomly express differently.
At a small scale, you might want very specific characteristics/colors/flavors/etc and not to get any surprises.
However, one cost of maintaining pure varieties is a long-term lack of genetic diversity due to the inbreeding usually required to establish or hybridize a specific variety. This can lead to pest or environmental susceptibility problems, as the plant's ability to overcome adversity was dampened by preventing it from mixing its genetics with other successful plants from different varieties.
Intentionally encouraging genetic diversity and then selecting over time for traits that you prefer can potentially allow natural genetics to help your plants overcome problems without necessarily resorting to expensive and problematic spray or fertilization methods.
Part of the purpose of this project is to encourage you to lose the need of always knowing what your plants are going to produce. Enjoy the surprise! If you don't like it, don't save the seeds.
Heirlooms are varieties of plants that were locally adapted and selected over time by communities of people for certain traits that they preferred. Sound familiar? However, most heirloom varieties commercially available from seed companies today were adapted to some place far away from here, a long time ago.
This project is trying to develop something like "new heirlooms" for this region, without fussing about names, commercialization, or variety purity.
Hybrids are plants that are the result of intentionally crossed, genetically diverse parents. This can often lead to better characteristics than either of the parent plants. However, if you save the seeds from a hybrid plant, any resulting plants will almost certainly not be the same variety as the hybrid itself.
Many seeds commercially available are hybrids; if it doesn't explicitly say 'hybrid', look for the tag 'F1' somewhere in its description.
We certainly accept seeds from hybrid plants (as long as the plant grew here), but just be aware that you often have no idea what varieties its seeds will produce. Exciting!
This project was started in 2023 by Kennon Ballou, a home gardener and plant enthusiast.
The book "Landrace Gardening: Food Security through Biodiversity and Promiscuous Pollination" by Joseph Lofthouse totally blew his mind and provided the inspiration for this project.
Lofthouse's organization Going To Seed is a great resource, and BGSEEDX is trying to do something similar for this area.
If you have any questions, reach out to: contact@bgseedx.org