As part of my new responsibilities as President, I'm reviewing everything that NARGS provides as a service to its members, and the Seed Exchange is certainly one of those services/benefits. Over the past few years the number of NARGS members who contribute seed to the SeedEx has declines, with the logical result that the quality and variety of seed available has diminished, leading to less interest in the SeedEx. This, of course, means that one of the leading benefits of NARGS membership is losing a lot of its attractiveness. And, of course, we want to reverse that process, and make the SeedEx what it was in the past, and (we believe) what it can be in the future.
So, what I'd like to ask those of you who are taking the time to read this, is:
1. If you DO contribute seed to the SeedEx, can you tell us why you do? Editorialize a bit, and share with us what the process of collecting, cleaning and packaging seed for the SeedEx really entails in time and effort. Thanks in advance.
2. If you DON'T contribute, could you tell us why you don't. Obviously a lot of our members don't contribute, and some of them have exceptionally fine gardens with a large variety of interesting and desirable plants.
I look forward to your responses, and feel free to add anything of relevance to the broad issue of seeds, germination, selection and Seed Exchanges of other organizations.