Agricultural Center
Food Self Sustainability
Our Agriculture Center is an ongoing project that combines vegetable, herb, and flower gardening. Our workshops will teach you how to pot, plant, and grow your own food at home either using conventional till methods, lasagne gardening, or container gardening
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SDCL Seed Library
The SDCL Seed Library is Open
Calling all green thumbs. The SDCL has accounted preparations for a new seed library to add to the Agricultural Center.
Donations needed
Starting August 2021, the SDCL will be collecting and cataloging seeds to prepare for our new seed library. Please bring your donations to the SDCL during normal operating hours.
Acceptable Seeds
Store Packaged seeds are acceptable, however, we really want native heirloom seeds.
How the program works
Patrons will be allowed to check out 3 packs of seeds per circulation period (7 days) After the plants growing season, please select a few healthy plants to go to seed. Completely dry the seeds and then return those seeds to the SDCL Seed Library to prepare inventory for the next growing season.
Growing Instructions
The Agriculture Center on this website will list available seeds, instructions on planting, healthy maintenance, and seed collection.
Anticipated FAQs
Q. Does the check out of seeds add to my normal items allowed for check out?
A. Yes. If you are limited to 10 items, your seed packs will apply to your limit for that check out day
Q. Why does my account say that the seeds that I checked out are declared lost?
A. In order to run inventory on seeds we had to do special set ups inside our Alexandria Library System. When you check out seeds, the package will have a 6 day transaction period. The system will think your seeds are due back in 6 days. After 7 days, the system will declare the seeds "lost". This is to remove it from our inventory system. All seeds are set as a zero value, and zero replacement fee. So there will be no charges to your account.
Q. Is there a charge for this service?
A. No, all that is required is to be a patron in good standing.
Q. I did not get a good crop. What should I do?
A. There will be some years our environment will not yield good or great crops for every type of plant. It is ok. Don't worry. But please report this to the library as we will be tracking germination rates, harvest amounts, and over-all quality of the seeds in our library.
Q. Oops, I forgot to collect seeds. Is there a fee?
A. No. The SDCL Seed Library is a courtesy service created by the community for the community. Not everyone will be able to produce new seeds to restore the library.
Q. I have never planted my own garden, but I want to participate. How can I learn what to do?
A. We will place links and videos within our online system. Workshops will be held as well. This program is launching in February 2022, so we will need time to build up this library. But resources will be available soon.
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