I'd love to swap too! I started a cottage garden last year on what used to be my front lawn. If I can manage to save some seeds, I'd love to do this. This will defintely get me motivated to learn how to save seeds. Tracy, if you are in Hamburg, NY and you need help with the swap, I'll volunteer to help you if you like, I live in East Aurora.

I'm glad you said that MeMo -- We are out of cups and every other little container, too. All - I have been thinking about what kind of contraption I could make that would help me dry the seeds before I pack them. What I would like is to have something totally open on the top where I could continually drop seedpods to finish ripening and drying. Then I could clean a certain kind all at once. I need some mesh yogurt cups. Or little cardboard boxes with coffee filters inside of them (I hate losing all those seeds in the seams of bags and boxes.) I have a bunch of bitty sacks...what kind of box could I put them in to hold them stable I case I overload with snapdragon stems or something? I don't mind cleaning them if I can sit down and do one kind all at once, then bag them. But I like things neat and tidy and things are increasingly perched here and there where I can't find what I need. Just thinking out loud, but if anybody has a seed drying shelf or anything, I'd love to hear about it! Lime

Oh good, Julie -- and you've got some good loot! So, how do people clean these seeds? What kind of equipment do you all have? Right now I am using 2 collanders and 2 strainers with different sized screens. To say my seed is chaffy is an understatement, but on a lot of them, I can't figure out what the seed even is (Filipendula for example). Others, like ageratum, I thought you were supposed to crumble the seed heads, but that would naturally include the browned petals. The heuchera is the same way, but in that case it's the short little stems of each individual flower that fall through the screens. On Victoria Salvia, I have to individually roll each seed pod between my fingers to get what appears to be a single seed out, and I have 1000s. On marigolds, not all the seeds are heavy and black -- some are light gray or white. I have 10,000s of those -- no way I am going to fish out the light gray ones and blowing on the plate was a disaster of the 1st magnitude, but thank goodness I did it outside! I can NOT be doing this right! It's hours and hours and hours just to clean & that's not including the packing & labeling. I heard some people are making their seed packs from scratch -- now how in the heck do you have time for that? All-in-all I would say I might get a bad reputation from my dirty seed. Lime P.S. Would a salad spinner do any good for anyof these seeds? I think I need to mechanize! LOL!

Hey Kim! Speaking for myself here, I say, family comes first! How is your son doing? My prayers go out to him for a total and speedy recovery and for peace for the rest of you! I can totally relate - trust me - I had hundreds and hundreds of seed packs here just waiting to be sent back out - people thought I fell off the end of the earth. I did - I landed in the er with one daughter, spent the next week in the hospital with dh trying to save his foot and spent the rest of the holidays in critical care with mil. You get your rest and take care of Mommy! Drink lots of water and take your vitamins, you don't want to stress your system so much you get sick too! I can wait, I understand. Oh, and watch out for the lime jello...eeewwee!