26-03-2004, 05:02 PM
|
|
|
Plant Swap Input Requested
The message
from (Fleemo) contains these words:
I'm putting on a plant swap for my neighborhood association next week.
I've never even been to a plant swap, but thought it sounded like a
fun idea. I'm looking for input on how it should be run. Are their
standards or guidelines, like swapping plants of the same size? Do
folks set out their plants like a garage sale, on a blanket or table?
Contributors never want to stay beside the plants they brought; they
want to start rummaging through what everyone else brought. Some
plantswaps use communal trestle tables, or if you're using a big open
space like a car park, you can just set plants out in rows on the
ground. Some plant swaps have sections for veg seedlings, herbaceous,
trees etc.
You'll find some people bring plants carefully grown and nurtured in a
proper pot with good compost, an immaculate legible accurate label, and
no weeds or slugs. Others dig up a spadeful of something along (with a
lot of weeds) on the morning of the sale, and dump it in a plastic bag
or cardboard box or just roll it in a newspaper, no name. If there's any
shade, put the dug-up stuff there because it wilts fast.
Either kind of contributor might be offering something really rare and
lovely, or as common as muck. If you have some knowledgeable gardening
friends, it's a good idea to have them hang around to identify plants
and tell beginners who ask, something about them; a plant book can be
useful. Identify helpers with a badge or daft hat. Provide plant labels
and pencils; strips of milk-carton will do.
Size; some people bring seeds that germinated last week and others
bring very large shrubs. Don't worry about it, each bringer has their
own notion of what's fair trade and it aint worth arguing. It's often
Germinated Bean who wants to swap it for rare lilies, and Large Shrub
who chooses a margarine pot of lettuce seedlings. Splitting a huge
herbaceous clump gives more people a share; so a couple of garden forks
or hand tools are useful. So are as many used plastic shopping bags as
you can lay hands on, for people to take their booty home, and a stack
of newspapers for wrapping ones that won't go in bags.
Pure swaps versus paying money, is always a bit of an issue. Some
attendees will be new gardeners or recently moved in, and have nothing
to swap, so it makes sense to decide a fixed price per plant portion or
pot, and to have a cash float for change.
I always have more used plastic pots than I know what to do with, and
a plant swap is a great place to offload them to keen propagators...
stack them in sets of 5 or 10.
Whatever time you announce it for, plantswap afficionadoes will get
there early to bag the best stuff, and create a scrum as it arrives. So,
if you want to start at 2pm, tell the public it starts at 2.30.At the
end of the swap, there is always stuff left over that nobody wants to
drag home, so have a disposal plan.
Have fun..I love plant swaps and have had some wonderful bargains. I
once found one by accident, just as it was closing, and spotted a huge
carton of colchicums in the green, wilting a bit. I asked the lady if I
could buy some and she said " Oh, no need to pay. Nobody knew what they
were, so nobody wanted them..you'd be doing me a big favour if you just
take the whole lot away".
:-)
Janet
|