More and more people want to share their passion for plants of all kinds: flowering plants, green plants, vegetable garden plants, fruit or ornamental shrubs… Logically, we are also witnessing a craze for the exchange of plants and seeds to enrich your garden or interior with plants without breaking the bank. Here are 5 ideas for recovering plants and seeds without spending a penny.
1 – Take seeds from your own plants
Since we cultivate ornamental plantsof the shrubs and vegetable plants, we can completely recover the seeds they produce in order to sow them the following year. This is the easiest way to collect a large number of seeds completely free.
2 – Collect the seeds of the products that we cook
Many people collect seeds from gourds but also the beansthe pips of melonsthe seeds of tomatoes and many more when cooking all these good market products.
All that remains then is to keep them in good conditions in order to sow them when the time comes, knowing that it is essential to obtain good information beforehand to cultivate them in the right season.
3 – Become addicted to seed banks
These are self-service points located in libraries, allowing you to pick up free seed boxes. This allows everyone to sow different plant species in order to maintain biodiversity. It’s always about local plants, therefore possessing the adaptive capacities in the region where they are distributed, whether they are flowering plants, vegetables or fruits. Seed banks also of course make it possible to deposit boxes of seeds so that everyone can benefit from them, and thus to carry out trades.
4 – Participate in “My Street in Flowers”
Operation Ma Rue en Fleurs is born in 2013 and takes place every year in the spring and then in the fall, from September to November.
It enabled the participating towns to see their streets radically change in appearance because their sidewalks are now beautifully flowered, as are the edges of the trees and shrubs, the window sills, the cracks in the low walls and the foot of the walls. The interest is of course ecological but also social. People who live in the city are thus more aware of plants and, by going to get their free seed kitthey promote the survival of pollinators.
Just follow the planting and maintenance advice thanks to the guide included in each kit. All the selected plants are less water-intensive et bloom for many months. These are perennials capable of adapting well to the urban environment, such as:
- The Great Margaret,
- California Poppy,
- wild blueberry,
- The Poppy…
Each year, all these plants swarm spontaneously and grow back.
There are also kits containing seeds of edible plants such as:
It is thus possible to recover seeds of vegetables and aromatic plants for free to sow in the garden, on the balcony or the terrace.
All the town halls do not yet participate in this participatory flowering operation. Happy are the inhabitants of the following cities:
- Bouguenais,
- buoy,
- Brains,
- Internal,
- The mountain,
- The Sorinieres,
- the Pellerin,
- Mauves-sur-Loire,
- Nantes,
- Paris,
- Reze,
- Saint-Jean-de-Boiseau,
- Saint-Aignan-de-Grand-Lieu,
- Saint-Leger-les-Vignes,
- Saint Herblain,
- Saint-Luce-sur-Loire,
- Saint-Sebastien-sur-Loire,
- Thouare-sur-Loire.
This list is not exhaustive.
5 – Visit sites specializing in the exchange of seeds
Thousands of people log on to these sites to make various seeds and plants available. Simply choose your favorite category and let yourself be guided. Vegetables, carnivorous plants, aromatic plants, flowers, wild plants, indoor plants, fruit trees, shrubs for hedges… You can find everything you want there.
A simple registration allows you to receive by email the plant barter calendar all over France.
Finally, it is also possible to ask for some seeds from the producers of its geographic area. Of course, it should not be abused all the same because the goal is not to plunder their stocks! Generally moreover, they sell their seeds but can possibly give some.