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Include links to information or images when editing your trade list
Out of zone range highlighting when processing trade lists
A system for rating transactions with other users
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Seed Trading Central

What's this all about?

A new feature here at PlantLinks: Seed Trading! I've traded seeds for about as long as I've been gardening, and have always enjoyed trying out new species and varieties from fellow gardeners in far-flung locations. One of my sources of trade partners was always the GardenWeb member seed exchange lists. That feature briefly went away after the site transitioned to Houzz, although trade lists are now again available. In the meantime though, I was inspired to build a new kind of seed-trading site that addresses some of the shortcomings I feel many other trading sites have. The result is here in front of you!

My goals are to avoid some of these pitfalls:

  • Seed trade lists get outdated quickly. A trade list that hasn't been updated in over a year probably belongs to a gardener who is no longer trading. Returning search results from such trade lists is unlikely to be helpful.
  • It should be easy to input and update your trade list. Having to input a trade list one species at a time gets really tedious if you have many dozens of items on your list. So there should be a way to get them all up at once.
  • On the other hand, there should be some organization and "intelligence" to the list, to enable searching and matching. It should be easy to see mis-spelled entries in the list, and botanical synonyms should be recognized. The Dave's Garden tradelist functionality does most of these things.
  • It should be easy to find more information about a species on a trade list.
  • The seed trading site should make it easy to select seeds that you'd like to trade for - whittling down from a long list of items on a trade list.

The PlantLinks seed trading section hopes to accomplish most of these goals to some extent. Let me know how I can improve on things! (you can use the "Contact" link above)

How to get started

You can look around and view trade lists without registering – but if you want to enter your own trade list, you'll have to register as a PlantLinks user. It's easy and non-intrusive, so give it a try.

As an incentive to get this off the ground, I'll send up to three items from my own trade list to the first 25 gardeners who register and enter a trade list. Just drop me a line to take me up on that offer.

Quick links to PlantLinks trading features

The links below go to public features. You'll see members-only features after you register and log in.

See who else trades on PlantLinks
Search trade lists
Shout! (Share your opinions and thoughts)