Permaculture, Homesteading, and Community Building // How I Sourced My Plants for Free (Part 1)

Hi friends! Today I want to talk about how I’ve sourced a lot of my plants. Creating a homestead can be expensive and the prices of plants in a nursery can be a huge barrier. I’ve been as creative as possible in obtaining plants. I’ve done this for two reasons: the first being to save money. The second reason is very important to me. I believe in the gift economy and in abundance rather than scarcity, and I believe that sharing creates community. I also believe that food sovereignty should be accessible to all people, and not just to the privileged elite. Food sovereignty has been defined by La Via Campesina as “the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems.”

Anyways, how did I source all of my goodies?

1) Seed Swaps!

I love seed swaps! I went to my first swap at the Bioneers Conference. You don't necessarily need to bring seeds to offer (it depends on the swap). In my case, I was just starting out in October and didn't have anything to offer at the time. People were more than happy to share what they had with me. Many individuals brought their seeds. Another wonderful contributer was Occidental Ecology Center, a well known 80-acre research, demonstration, advocacy, and organizing center.

I was able to get seeds that I had never heard of before, including some perennial vegetables that I am beyond excited about. Some examples of the seeds I obtained are sea beet, wild cabbage, white sage, bronze fennel, tobacco, napolitano basil, and amaranth. I've been to several seed swaps since my first one, and am already starting to save seeds to offer to others in the future.

2) Scion Exchanges

For anyone interested in planting fruit trees (which I highly recommend for any space), you know that fruit trees can be pricey. They typically range anywhere from $30-$100 per tree. Whoa! I want to plant 100 trees this year...even if I were to buy each tree for $30 that's still $3000. So, what did I do? I went to a scion exchange!

Scions are a cutting off of a branch from a healthy fruit tree that can be grafted (attached) onto a rootstock. If you try to take an apple seed and plant it and grow an apple tree from that seed, it will not be the same apple with the same flavor as the parent tree. Instead, what we do is create rootstocks from apple seeds, and then take a scion cutting from the apple tree that we want to replicate and graft the scion onto the rootstock.

So, I went to this scion exchange where a whole community of fruit tree lovers brought scion cuttings from their prized trees to share with others. I brought some cuttings from my peach and plum trees that are wonderful producers. I was blown away by how much abundance of scions there were at this event. I was able to get scions of apples, pears, nectarines, plums, peaches, feijoas, figs, kiwis, grapes, apple pears, and more. They had rootstocks for sale for $3 per rootstock, and expert grafters that would graft the scions onto the rootstocks for $3 per graft. I have a friend who is a nursery manager with access to a lot of rootstocks, and another friend who is an amazing grafter, so I didn't graft my scions at the event. Instead, I took them home and put them in a humidity controlled draw in my fridge in a ziplock bag until I was able to get the rootstocks from my friend.

If grafting and obtaining rootstocks seems like too much work for you, there are a few fruit trees that don't need these steps. The scion cuttings of figs, kiwis, and grapes can be stuck directly in potting soil and they will grow into new trees from there! I have around 50 baby fig, kiwi, and grape trees in my greenhouse at the moment. I can't wait for all of those delicious goodies!

3) Asking neighbors

I've recently been blown away by how many of my neighbors are already growing some of their own food or have culinary herb gardens. I posted on Nextdoor.com (a community forum that connects you to your neighbors, address verification is required) asking if anyone had herbs that could give me a few cuttings of. I was specifically looking for herbs that I could propagate from cuttings. I will get more into detail about this process of propagation, but basically I can take a 5 inch cutting of mint (the top of the plant), and stick it in potting soil and it will soon root and make a new mint plant.

This is what I posted on Nextdoor.com:

Hi neighbors! I'm excited to start my herb garden and just learned that I can easily propagate new herb plants from cuttings rather than growing them from seed.
Does anyone have herb plants that they would be willing to have me take some cuttings from? (each cutting would be about 6" long and would actually promote new growth of the plant)
I'm looking for these plants specifically:
Lavender, Mint (all types), Majoram, Sage, Savory, Sweet Woodruff, Pineapple Sage, Tulsi (Holy Basil), Lemon Balm, Lemon Verbena, and any other herbs that you know of that can be propagated from cuttings!
Additionally, I have some beautiful raspberry plants in pots that I would love to offer as well as a couple of baby comfrey plants. Thank you!

I had 6 neighbors invite me over to their homes and offer me plants. The thread even sparked an organized neighborhood iris exchange. In return, I offered them raspberry plants and comfrey plants that I have in abundance. Here is a list of some of the cuttings and full plants that my neighbors offered me : chocolate mint, peppermint, lemon balm, lavender, oregano, thyme, parsley, rosemary, sage, yarrow, mugswort, rose geranium, a lime tree, pickling ginger, yerba buena, celery, mexican sunflower, tayberry, and more... Wow, what abundance!