A Library for your Garden: San Francisco Seed Library

This is so my kind of library. Got this email from TastingTable today. You can get seeds for free at the San Francisco Seed Library.

Visit the Potrero branch of the San Francisco Public Library, and you’ll spot a display with rows of little yellow envelopes: the San Francisco Seed Library. Created in 2011, the exchange offers free seeds for the taking. Most come from donations and volunteers’ gardens.

Come harvest time, the organizers hope the recipients will return good seeds from the plants they grow to keep the library's collection expanding. The mission is for participants to collectively discover the vegetable, legume and grain varieties that will flourish in San Francisco's 'quirky' climate.

Harvesting seeds to return to the fledgeling seed library is not as straightforward as it might seem. To learn more, the Berkeley-based Bay Area Seed Interchange Library is offering a seed-saving class on Saturday, April 13. Urban-agriculture activist Antonio Roman-Alcalá will be teaching several classes at the Potrero library in June. (Check the branch’s online event listings in a month or so for times.)

And, of course, you can check out all kinds of gardening books, while you're at the library.. Or Gardening Mysteries! Lots of plant lore in these.