wanted: closer plant trades to charleston, sc

13 years ago

Hello All,

This is going to be kind of a complaining post.

Please, folks up in North Carolina, do not take offense to any of this, My mother lives in Raleigh and I have met many of you the few times I went to the Raleigh plant swap.

I really would like to swap more plants with people, but this forum NEVER seems to have any South Carolina folks, LET ALONE Charleston people. I see hundreds of posts relating to the Raleigh Plant swap (John, you do a HELL of a good job on that)! I post something about a Charleston plant swap and all I get is crickets! My Spring swap we had 75 people there, Fall I had 55. I always get a good local response, Master Gardeners, Newspaper, Facebook and such. We even do it the same way as Raleigh. Charleston Swappers, are you out there!!??

Sending plants in the mail is an option, but so dog gone expensive. I would like to find more local people. There is even a Local plant exchange online: http://cubits.org/lcge

This does not even seem to be a good outlet. North Carolina, what do you have we don't?

Even the garden/farm section of Craigslist sucks here, you guys get hundreds of posts, we get 20 on a busy day.

Anybody have any ideas on how I can improve any of these sites? I have lots of plants that I would like to trade, but can't because either the shipping is cost prohibitive or the plants do not fly well. I have tried sending some Theobroma cacao to folks and it dies because of the cold on the plane. Ground shipping is WAY too expensive.

Oh well, Thank You for allowing me to vent. Maybe this will spark a Charleston swap or two and I can get even more people to my next Spring swap.

Darren

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Comments (2)

trianglejohn
13 years ago
Hey Darren - We miss and your wonderful plants at our swap!!!

Our swaps have kinda diminished in the past few years - they are now nothing like back when you came up to Raleigh. Not that I'm complaining, I was thrilled when only 12 people showed up back when I started them nine or ten years ago.

I think that there is core group of like 15 people that do most of the back and forth online chatter about the swap and most of that frenzy only started when we started having the "Special Trades" part of the swaps.

Sometimes I get emails from folks wanting to exchange plants throughout the year but I only want to mess with it during the swaps. I guess it hurts their feelings but I don't have the time to be boxing up plants and standing in line at the Post Office - I get all I need from the swaps.

With all the good gardening in the Charleston area you would think there would be an active trading community there! You have a right to be disappointed.

I get the praise but I really don't believe that I have anything to do with the success of our swaps. It was just the right time and the right place - I got the idea from some other forum on Garden Web. So my advice would be to stick with it and hope that more gardeners in your area wake up to the fun of swaps.
The Citrus Guy
Original Author
13 years ago
Thanks for the kind words John!
You guys had/have a great swap up there, any ideas on the decline? Lack of interest?
Economy?
Anyway, if you ever feel the need to come down to Charleston, Let me know you are coming......I would love to give you a tour of the yard...besides, I am sure you would go home with more plants that you came with! LOL