Staffing the Seed Table at TOG

For those of you who are not familiar with TOG, here in Tucson the acronym stands for the Tucson Organic Gardeners. It is the wonderful organization that I go to in order to talk garden with others. There is currently a mere $15 fee and a minimal number of hours of service to the organization and it is well worth the perks to be involved including their Tuesday meetings and their newsletter. It is the garden club for people who do not want too much of a time commitment, but still want to increase their gardening knowledge. So just last night, the volunteer coordinator for TOG (Kathy) called me and asked if I would staff the seed table for the Compost Fair. Though I had some other commitments in the morning I was able to staff it in the afternoon. I really do like the seeds we order through Seeds of Change. Though I was a bit bewildered by something I saw today. Seeds of Change carries some hybrid seed. This leads me to my feelings about hybrid seed. I have always had a problem with F1, or hybrid, seeds being labeled as organic. Even with my understanding of the fact that an organic plant can produce hybrid seed, I personally feel that a non-organic seed is more useful if it is open-pollinated than hybrid seed is - even if it happens to be organic.

In any case – I had some fun today staffing the seed table. We were also selling compost cranks, soil amendments, and compost bins (what do you expect – it was a compost fair)! One of my daughters came with me. Although I wasn't about to devote a lot of time to her, she did enjoy the event whilst collecting seed packets and marshmallows from a few adults willing to give a cute little girl something. You know there’s a gardener in the household when, upon arriving home from an event like this, my daughter can taunt her siblings by showing off her new seed packets!

Staffing the Seed Table for the Tucson Organic Gardeners