Seed Mania! 2025

Mania: An excessively intense enthusiasm, interest or desire — American Heritage Dictionary

It’s spring! The season has turned sunny, warm and green and I’m feeling itchy to get my hands in the dirt. I’ve caught seed mania, and maybe you have too. If so, we have help for you: Seed Mania! 2025. This fun, free, family community event is coming Sunday March 23, 1-6 pm at Prescott College.

This is the event's fifth year, started by Slow Food Prescott in 2019 and including a year break during the pandemic, with the goal of kick-starting spring. Join us to celebrate the season and learn what you can do about that intense enthusiasm to plant seeds.

We’ll have seeds, lots of seeds, to treat your maniacal condition. We’ll have seeds that grow well locally to give away. If you have seeds to share, bring them along (packaged and labeled with their common name, please) for the seed exchange.

We will have the famous Prescott Heritage Tomato seed available. I am honored to be the grower of these seeds for Native Seed/Search. I researched and discovered their story. Read “The Prescott Tomato Story” online at 5ensesmag.com.

We’ll have garden advice from local experts, businesses and organizations, for beginners, intermediate, and advanced maniacs to lant one flower pot or one acre. And we’ll have a list of backup support, garden coaches and mentors to contact for help through the growing season.

We’ll have activities for kids of all ages, games and giveaways, and hands-on immersive activities with compost, seed, herbs, worms and dirt. Walter Tortoise might even come out of hibernation for this!

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I’m bringing special mud for seed balls. (Seed balls, also known as earth balls or nendo dango, consist of seeds rolled within a ball of clay and other matter to assist germination. They are then thrown into vacant lots and over fences as a form of guerilla gardening. Matter such as humus and compost are often placed around the seeds to provide microbial inoculants. — Wikipedia)

Starting at 1:30 and continuing every hour on the half hour till 4:30, we’ll have workshops to jump your mania into action, whether it’s the mysteries and makeup of seeds themselves, successful gardening soil and compost, microgreens, mushrooms or fruit trees.

Ongoing we’ll have music and food, beverages and snacks, and a tour of the spring-startup Prescott College garden, including chickens and ducks. It’s a real celebration! At 4:30 we’ll have an exceptionally delicious, healthy and free seed-themed meal cooked with locally grown, heritage foods — Tepary Bean Soup paired with Fresh Corn Sopa de Elote, Lighthouse Salsa, Roasted Squash Pumpkinseed Cornbread, Red Cabbage Coleslaw, Sesame Seedy Cookies and Mint Navajo (Greenthread) Tea (gluten-free and vegan options too).

Immediately following dinner service we’ll have a couple of speakers to orient our personal mania into thankfulness and community appreciation. Come at one, stay the whole afternoon, bring the family and friends — spread the word for the best seed-mania treatment!