Happy March, Gardeners!
I want to start off by thanking everyone who came to our annual seed swap, Seedy Saturday. We saw around 90 people come through to swap seeds and speak with our special guests. I estimate just over 500 seed packets were taken home that day! I have so many seeds left over that it might take me another month to get through them all and get them into the cabinet as we also received donations from the following nurseries:
I also want to extend heartfelt gratitude to my wonderful volunteers that made our event flow better than previous years: Tom, Jim & Lynn, and Patty, thank you for your continued support of our seed library!
And thank you to our special guests, Echo Valley Natives, Food Hero, Master Gardeners Cindy and Kris, and Amy with the Community Gardens, for offering your time to be available to our community members to answer questions and provide resources.
Finally, thank you to The Garden Massage Therapy in Sandy for donating a gift basket that was an extra special treat for one lucky patron.
Upcoming Events
Harnessing Nature: Effective Biological Control Strategies
Please join the Washington County Master Gardener Association’s March speaker series for this presentation by Paola Sotelo-Cardona, IPM Educator at Oregon State University. Paola will discuss the importance of insects and the diverse ecological services that beneficial insects provide and their roles in Integrated Pest Management (IPM) practices.
When: Tuesday, March 3, 7 - 8pm
Where: Zoom, Online - Register Here
Discover practical, reliable guidance for growing your own delicious vegetables and enjoying a plentiful harvest this summer. OSU Extension Service Master Gardener™ volunteer Cindy Manselle will highlight essential steps to plan, prepare, plant, and care for a thriving vegetable garden. Whether you're a first-time gardener or looking to sharpen your skills, you’ll leave ready to cultivate your most successful season yet.
When: Monday, March 9, 6 - 7pm
Where: Hoyt Community Room, Sandy Public Library
Pollinator Panel
In honor of National Learn About Butterflies Day, Sandy's Bee City, USA Action Group is hosting a pollinator panel to discuss how you can make a difference in supporting important insects, such as butterflies. Panelists include folks from Clackamas River Basin Council, Clackamas Soil and Water Conservation District, and OSU Master Gardener Extension Service. Call 503-668-5569 for more information.
When: Thursday, March 12, 6 -7:30pm
Where: Sandy Community and Senior Center (38348 Pioneer Blvd, Sandy)
Spring is almost here! Come to the first meeting of the year to discuss your plans, hear what your neighbors are doing, and participate in a seed starting workshop led by Brianna (hey that's me!). Seeds will be provided by the Sandy Seed Library, but you are welcome to bring your own. In addition, if you have any seed-starting containers, please bring those as well as minimal containers will be provided along with seed starting soil mix.
When: Monday, March 23, 6:30 - 8pm
Where: Hoyt Community Room, Sandy Public Library
Explore the LINCC Library Trail: The Seed Library Side Quest!
From March 1st - May 31st all LINCC libraries are sponsoring an Explore the LINCC Library Trail program, wherein patrons of all ages are invited to pick up a passport and explore the 13 libraries in Clackamas County. Get your passport stamped at each library you visit to mark your journey. The more libraries you visit, the more raffle entries you’ll receive. Visit all 13 libraries to be entered into your library’s grand prize raffle. The event is intended to help patrons discover new favorite locations, enjoy unique services, or simply explore their community and celebrate everything our libraries have to offer.
And we have a seedy side quest for you: Do you know how many LINCC libraries have seed libraries?* Go explore and find out! Can you visit them all?
(*Hint: More than half of the LINCC libraries have seed sharing programs!)
Adopt a Crop Project 2026
This program is led by the Oak Lodge-based seed library, Seeds for Sharing. It provides us the opportunity to collaborate with other LINCC seed libraries and will guide participants with monthly emails on how to grow climate-resilient squash or runner beans and create the next generation of locally adapted food and seeds for our communities.
Registration is now through April 15 with this Google Form.
For more information, email: seedsforsharing@gmail.
Seeds for Sharing Instagram Page
Bonus Note: Seeds for Sharing has shared seeds with us from their community garden and seed-savers. Check out the cabinet for local herbs, flowers, native flowers, and some veggies (including beans, sweet corn, and tomatoes!).
Seed Starting!
Spring is just around the corner and there are many varieties that do best in our shorter growing season when started earlier, indoors.
Food Hero, with OSU, has a great tip sheet available on Seed Starting.
Peaceful Valley also sent out some great information in their newsletter about soaking seeds before sowing for better germination.
** Click Here to Read All About It **
What I've Been Reading
Starting and Saving Seeds by Julie Thompson-Adolf
I discovered this book through Kathy Jentz, the Washington Gardener Magazine editor and publisher, as she recommended it during a presentation I was watching about seed exchanges (you might remember me mentioning her when I gave some background on National Seed Swap Day).
What I like about this book is that it presents excellent photos alongside a very organized layout of instructions. The pictures also extend to supplies you could use to help prevent cross-pollination if you would like to save the seeds of plants that can cross-pollinate. Plus, we can revisit this book for seed saving as it is so great and describing and showing the different ways to save seeds. That is all in the first half of the book! The second half is dedicated to meeting the plants and gives a profile on a variety of fruits, veggies, and flowers.
What I've Been Reading Children's Edition
Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt by Kate Messner.
This book focuses on grandma and grandchild starting in early spring and moving through each season. The focus goes between what is happening in the dirt while they are working in the garden. There is emphasis on the different insects and critters that live and contribute to the growing season. At the end there is an About the Animals sections that goes into more detail about all the critters that were part of the story.
Rick's Corner
Recently I saw that the excellent Michael Pollan, author of numerous bestsellers, including the Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defence of Food, and How to Change Your Mind, has a new book out, A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness, about the thorny question of consciousness and the mysteries of sentience, thought, and selfhood. What is consciousness? How and why did it evolve? What are nonhuman varieties of consciousness like, and how are they fundamentally different from ours? How does a bat, for instance, which negotiates the world in a totally alien way to how we do (echolocation), experience the world? Or, for that matter, a dog, which has a level of sentience and self-awareness that is recognizable to any dog owner?
Do plants have their own version of consciousness?
These questions are big, meaty questions, and examining them risks a deep mental rabbithole, plus, …this is the Seed Library Newsletter, after all, so you might be thinking to yourself, Why, Rick, are you prattling on about this? To which I’d answer, Good question, dear reader! The arrival of Pollan’s new book on my radar has reminded me to take another look at Pollan’s first book, Second Nature: A Gardener's Education, a book that is perfect subject for this newsletter.1
Second Nature, named by the American Horticulture Society as one of the 75 Great American Garden Books, is not a how-to book. Rather, it is a collection of essays arranged by season chronicling Pollan’s journey as a novice gardener over seven years establishing a garden on five acres of old worn-out land in Cornwall, Connecticut. The experience certainly taught him much about gardening, which he shares, but he learned even more about developing a local sense of place, what it means to work the land, and understanding his place in nature. An impressive blend of memoir, social history, and day-to-day, month-to-month experience, it is a beautifully written, deep exploration of what gardening fundamentally is, what gardening represents, what gardening means. Gardening as a philosophy.
It is, ultimately, a book on how to think about gardening, life, and nature in our ever-increasingly technological world, and a perfect classic to revisit as we turn our attention to another season in the garden.
As always, thank you for being here,
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