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Monday, March 18, 2024
March 18, 2024

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Cultivating interest: Great Clark County Seed Swap

First-year event hopes to attract new, younger gardening enthusiasts

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Local gardeners explore the wide range of seeds -- more than a million -- available Saturday at the first Great Clark County Seed Swap at the La Center Grange.
Local gardeners explore the wide range of seeds -- more than a million -- available Saturday at the first Great Clark County Seed Swap at the La Center Grange. Photo Gallery

LA CENTER — Jacob Luiz, 12, grinned as he walked into the state’s oldest Grange with a container full of Yukon Gold seed potatoes that he sprouted himself.

The La Center Middle School sixth-grader got the gardening bug from his great-grandfather, and when he heard that the La Center Grange was doing a seed swap on Saturday, he was thrilled, he said.

“My mom’s friend saw on Facebook about the seed swap and told my mom; Ever since, I’ve been excited to share my seeds,” Jacob said. “My great-grandpa, he lives in California. Ever since I was little, we’d visit and walk through his garden. I was attracted to the color and look of his vegetables, and I wanted to grow my own.”

Jacob has his own small greenhouse at home and has been exploring his green thumb over the past three years. At the seed swap, he picked up some new kinds of vegetables to try: leeks, golden grape tomatoes, kale, bunching onion greens, Walla Walla onions and bibb lettuce.

“The Walla Walla onion is our state vegetable, too,” he said proudly.

The Great Clark County Seed Swap is the brainchild of Greg and Rose Smith, leaders of the La Center Grange, and their daughter, Megan Roth. It’s the first year of the event at the Grange, which was founded in 1874.

“I just hadn’t seen a lot of seed swaps in the area, and I thought it would be a great way to get seeds out to the community,” Roth said. “I wrote letters, asked for donations from several companies for our seed swap. Whatever we don’t swap will be used to start a new community garden here.”

Companies chip in

Several companies responded with generous donations, including Irish Eyes Seeds, which donated about 1,000 packets of a broad array of organic, non-GMO seeds, Roth said.

“They have a great seed policy,” Roth said. “Seed that they didn’t sell the year before, or that they had too much of, it’s donated to lots of community organizations.”

Grange membership has been declining almost everywhere over the past few decades, but that didn’t appear to be a problem as dozens of visitors streamed through the building on a beautifully sunny and spring-like Saturday afternoon.

The national Grange system was founded in 1867 as a society for farmers and farm families to support one another. But as many areas have become more urban-focused, and traditional members have gotten older, it’s been hard to recruit new members, Greg and Rose Smith said.

The couple said they hope gardening events like the seed swap will invigorate the public and draw some newcomers into the organization.

“We have a lot of plans,” Rose Smith said. “It’s just that a lot of the grange people are elderly, and many have died. We want to make it more friendly for new people, turn it into a community hub.”

Among their plans for this year are to launch a community garden at the Grange, 328 W. Fifth St. They hope it will provide a place for apartment dwellers and the elderly to visit if they don’t have room for their own gardens.

“There are a lot of people in La Center that just don’t have access to gardening in their own yards,” Rose Smith said. “We also want to work on a sensory garden for the sight impaired and a garden for the handicapped with raised beds so that people in wheelchairs can use them.”

Marie Coffey, who lives east of La Center, said she was excited to see so many people enjoying the seed swap. She came to hunt for some spinach, Swiss chard and tomatoes.

“I think this is a terrific idea,” Coffey said. “The weather is so great, you just want to get out and start planting.”

Chance to experiment

Debbie Woodhouse, who lives in Brush Prairie, said she couldn’t pass up the opportunity to share some of her own seeds and try some new ones.

“This is the first seed swap I’ve ever been to,” Woodhouse said. “I’m going to try a lot of different kales and a variety of red mustard. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with the mustard, but I’m going to try it anyway because it looks pretty.”

One of the advantages of the swap is that it lets gardeners try small amounts of some types of plants that they might otherwise avoid growing. Another is that seeds donated and exchanged by those in the community are also a great way for newer gardeners to select plants that grow well in the region, Greg Smith said.

“This is a neat opportunity for people,” he said. “You can get 10 seeds and just try something out in a small area. You can experiment, rather than being stuck with too many seeds for a plant you might not want that much of.”

Next year, organizers hope the event will grow even larger.

“This will be an annual event,” Greg Smith said. “We’ll learn from what we do this year and expand on it even more. I think it’s a great use for the building.”

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