Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Pima County----Wide---- Seed Libraries

SeedBroadcast partnered up with the Pima County Seed Libraries at Joel D. Valdez, Main Library on Jacome Plaza, in Tucson, AZ, to share the seed library with passerby's, while packaging seeds, and meeting some of the folks responsible for making this seed library possible.

SeedBroadcast on Jacome Plaza
Librarians join us at the van to package seeds, and discuss seeds, seed libraries, and critical mass.
Librarian, Justine Hernandez helps people make seed balls: using clay, water, and seeds

The Pima County Seed Libraries is now in its second year and operates out of all the 27 branch locations of the Pima County Library System. Seeds are catalogued just like books, allowing patrons of the seed library to get online in their homes or local library branch and select open pollinated seeds via interlibrary loan to be sent to their nearest home library for pick up.

Seeds are cataloged along with all other library materials.

Librarian, Justine Hernandez talks about how the Pima Seed Library was started and how it functions today. 

The seed library is supported through not only the infustructure of the library system, but also the Pima county seed saving community at large. Seed savers bring extra seeds to the library to share. These include native plants, flowers, and vegetables. Some of these generous folks stopped by to visit with SeedBroadcast and share Seed Stories. Charles Bufe, a local gardening aficionado, brought several different types of tomato starts to share....a great seed story in the planting.

Charles Bufe's Zacatiran tomato plants.

We also learned that Tucson has a very broad reaching community garden network. Several of these gardeners showed up to find out more about the SeedBroadcast Seed Story Broadcasting Station and share what is growing in Tucson. This network also extends into the Public School system, which has several gardening projects implementing hands-on educational programs and gardening clubs.

Card catalog housing the seeds, and a wealth of information about growing, saving, and sharing seeds.....and some really awesome librarians!

Thank you Pima County Seed Library and all the folks we met for a wonderful day of Seed Story Broadcasting!

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