KASSI offers local seeds for community gardeners

Looking for open-pollinated seeds for your long weekend planting? Kingston Area Seed System Initiative (KASSI) will have two locations this Saturday, May 22, where gardeners can pick up seeds suitable for growing food, and for seed saving at maturity.

The seeds will be available on a first come, first served basis, according to a release from KASSI. The pickup locations and times are:

• Sunnyside Community Garden, 250 MacDonnell Street, Kingston: 11 a.m. – 2 p.m.
• Lakeside Community Garden, Front Road at Days Road, near Centre 70 arena: 2 p.m. – 5 p.m.

The organization said they will leave tins of the remaining seeds on site at each community garden following these pick-up times. If you miss the pickup times, or there are other seeds you are looking for, you are invited you to fill out the seed order form.

You can view the available seeds and make a sliding scale donation on the KASSI site: https://seedsgrowfood.org/meet-the-seeds/

The Kingston Area Seed System Initiative works to build the regional seed system, by

• growing out the locally adapted, open-pollinated seeds in the KASSI Living Seed Commons to save and share with everyone in our region
• encouraging the practice of seed-saving and building a community of skilled seed savers
• supporting the development of a vibrant sustainable network of local ecological growers producing local food and local seeds that can be legally grown, saved and shared.

KASSI is not a seed company. They are a very small non-profit working with a shoestring budget, especially since the in-person Seedy Saturdays in 2020 and 2021 (their major fundraisers) were cancelled. They rely on donations and volunteers to help them grow, harvest, clean and package these “Seeds of Hope”. Follow them on Facebook and Instagram to learn more about their work, and visit their website for more details about the organization.