Too many tomatoes? Too few fava beans? Why not swap them with Veggie Trader, a brand new online community for gardeners and eaters alike. On the site you can list fruits, veggies and herbs and either negotiate a trade or just plain buy and sell them. And beyond supporting at-home gardening and fresh eats, Veggie Trader also hopes to build communities of gardeners by encouraging users to plan their harvest and specialize in certain crops.
Veggie Trader’s groups involve people from the same areas banding together for regular swaps. Each person contributes their specialty—say you’ve got a lemon tree in your backyard or the sweetest thai basil in town. Produce enough to share with your community at regular swaps. It’s been about a month since Veggie Trader launched and the seeds still germinating, so pickings are understandably slim. Now is your chance to sow a few extra rows of your local specialty and start planning ahead for the harvest. Never gardened before? This is the perfect economy to start in. Its not too late to get some seeds in the ground—the Obamas did it!
We should all have our own vegetable gardens. I’ve got a potted tomato plant on my patio and basil growing in with my poppies. Of course, I can’t eat all my own tomatoes even if I went on a wild tomato bender for days. I tried last year. There were just too many, even off my little plant. If I could only find a Veggie Trader group with snap peas. I could really use some of those.