Seed trading through PlantLinks

Submitted by Broekhuis on Sat, 02/14/2015 - 15:21

I tend to have left-overs from my seed gathering efforts of the past season, as well as a some extras from society seed exchanges. When I was freshly addicted to gardening, I traded these seeds with great fervor, mostly using GardenWeb and word of mouth to find trading partners. Nowadays, I don't trade quite so much any more, but I still like to scout around for gardeners with interesting seeds on offer, and do some trading every year. So I was disappointed to see that the seed exchange lists at GardenWeb have disappeared, as part of their transition to Houzz.com earlier this year. On the other hand, it gave me some new incentive to work on a project I'd contemplated for some time: a seed exchange platform for "serious" gardeners (ones who prefer the precision of botanical names, for one thing). Features I was looking for that were missing from other platforms included

* ways to exclude offerings from traders who last updated their list three years ago

* ways to easily find more information about unfamiliar species on the list

* an easy means of whittling down a trade list down to the items of most interest

* automatic comparison of "want lists" with "trade lists" to find promising trading partners

* a simple way of inputting a trade list (one that doesn't involve doing it one species at a time)

After a week of tinkering, what I put together is a modest, but I think promising, new platform for uploading and searching trade lists. Of course it will never amount to anything if nobody uses it (there are two trade lists up now - hopefully more soon)! So if this sounds like something you might be interested in, please swing by at http://www.robsplants.com/plantlinks/scripts/trade.php , and look around a bit. For most of the features you'll need to register as a user, which only takes a minute. Even better, upload your own list! A simple copy/pasted list from wherever else you may keep track of your spare seeds is all it takes.

I'd be most interested in your feedback: is this useful? how can it be more useful? any suggestions for other venues to publicize this?

Thanks in advance for your insights.

Rob

Comments


Submitted by Lori S. on Sun, 02/15/2015 - 23:40

Wow, sounds like a terrifically useful effort!  I'm going to take a look at it now.