Vegetable seed growing handbook

2008 Annual Report for LNE07-266

Project Type: Research and Education
Funds awarded in 2007: $26,441.00
Projected End Date: 12/31/2009
Region: Northeast
State: Vermont
Project Leader:
Co-Leaders:
Margo Baldwin
Chelsea Green Publishing

Vegetable seed growing handbook

Summary

The Vegetable Seed Growing Handbook is currently being written from much accumulated information that was gathered through several years of investigation. This investigation began with library research and interviews with many seed growers who had years of experience with aspects of sustainable seed production.

The material gathered was presented to farmers interested in seed production through a series of workshops and classes given by both the Organic Seed Alliance (OSA) and Restoring Our Seed, both of which had SARE grants to teach seed growing skills. This interaction with hundreds of farmers through at least a dozen workshops and field days in these programs enabled me to have a very good understanding of which information was most beneficial to the farmers and how to present it to be best understood. This is described in detail in the 2006 and 2007 annual reports.

Since 2006 all of the work on this grant has gone into writing and assembling all of the accumulated information into a readable, useable whole. It is now in the editorial stage with transcript chapters being turned into Ben Watson (the Chelsea Green editor) on a regular basis.

Objectives/Performance Targets

All of the Objectives and Performance Targets as originally designed for this project were met by 2006. These goals were indicators of the feedback from the Target Audience (seed growers) and were tested on the target audience through a number of classes that covered the same material.

Please see the Final Report for 2006.

Accomplishments/Milestones

The Milestones were well designed ways of gathering feedback from the several hundred farmers that went through a number of seed growing workshops, field days, and classes. All Milestones were met and the information/feedback gathered was instrumental in determining the format and information that is highlighted in the book.

Impacts and Contributions/Outcomes

The final Impacts/Outcomes will only be known and measurable when the book is published and gets into the hands of the farmers that it is being produced for. At the time of publishing we will put a postcard into the first 1000 copies of the book with a questionnaire for the farmers on the value of various aspects of the book. This information will be reviewed and considered by myself and my editor, Ben Watson at Chelsea Green, and the information will be used to possibly revise specific sections of the book for the 2nd edition. We have kept part of the budget for the purpose of printing and distributing this postcard questionnaire. The anticipated date of publication for the book is the fall of 2009.