Mzung Space’s garden has many kinds of plants. — Photo tuoitre.vn

HCM CITY — Hải Đăng, 27, and Minh Thư, 34, and their group members have spent many months connecting gardens to create a “seed library”.

Đăng and Thư, both from District 4 in HCM City, have a passion for the work and offering quality seeds to anyone who needs them.

Purebred seeds

The project to set up a library of purebred seeds is part of the environmental activities of Mzung Space, also founded by Đăng and Thư.

The library has more than 20 kinds of seeds including gourd, amaranth, broccoli, zucchini, sachi seeds, bitter melon and daisies.

Buying seeds is not difficult, especially now industrial seeds are on sale in many places, but finding pure seeds is not easy.

Thư told Tuổi trẻ (Youth) newspaper that all of seeds in the library had clear origin, and most of them are from Nhà Cười Garden in Đà Lạt City and the Saigon Compass Organisation.

In addition, the seeds must be planted in many crops and cultivated in the form of forest garden, not a monoculture.

When farmers want to plant a crop, the first thing they think about is going to an industrial seed store instead of finding seeds from the previous crop. Due to the convenience of buying industrial seeds, people forget about breeding for the next season.

“Industrial seeds cannot be used for the next season. If one day, there is no company supplying industrial seeds, how will farmers manage? And what will our food source be?,” Đăng said.

This question was how Đăng and Thư got the idea to found the seed library.

The purpose of the group is sustainable agriculture, which seeds are an essential part of.

Ready to present

All of the seeds have a clear origin. — Photo tuoitre.vn

In the middle of last month, the group organised a festival to present seeds for free.

The festival was held in a house on Bến Vân Đồn Road in District 4, the office of Mzung Space. The house is full of green colour from different kinds of trees such as banana, bitter melon and sweet potato buds.

“The garden is like an experimental way to study so that the group can invest more in the seed library,” Thư said.

The festival attracted many young people, who love gardening and live in HCM City. Besides presenting seeds, the group also shared their experience in sowing, planting and tending to each type of tree in different conditions.

Nam Phương, a young person who attended the festival, said, “I’m quite impressed by their way to create a library and to share their seeds.”

“Thanks to the seeds and their information, my seeds such as daisies, gourds and squash are growing well,” she added.

All people at the festival committed to giving their seeds after each crop to other people in need, or to the seed library.

Đăng said the main difficulty of the project was that many kinds of seeds can only be stored for one or two years at normal temperatures.

The project also set up a system of gardens ready to share information and present their seeds.

“Via the project, my group hopes to receive support and consultancy from agricultural experts,” said Đăng. — VNS