Five rules. Read them once, trade all season.

Barter / trade only — no money

Garden Trade is a barter marketplace. Every swap is goods or services for goods or services. No cash, no PayPal, no Venmo, no gift cards, no crypto, no IOUs. If a swap turns into a money transaction, it's no longer a Garden Trade swap. Walk away from anyone who asks for money, and report the listing to douglas@gordenwebdesign.com.

Permitted swaps include produce-for-produce, produce-for-seedlings, eggs-for-sourdough, ferments-for-honey, plant-care-for-starts, and labor-for-produce (you spend a Saturday helping weed a garden and go home with a half-bushel of tomatoes). Money is the only thing that's off the table.

No commercial resellers

You grew it, you raise it, you fermented it, you preserved it, or you saved the seed — and you can show that on the meetup. You didn't buy it from a wholesaler and turn around to trade it on Garden Trade. The first time a listing is flagged as a resale, the listing is removed and the user is removed. We don't give second chances here because the platform only works if it's true.

No commercial farms or co-ops

Backyard and small-homestead scale only. Garden Trade is for gardeners who could walk you to the bed. Commercial growers, U-pick operations, and farm co-ops should use farmers markets and their own sales channels. We cap per-listing quantities at the platform level to discourage the wrong users here.

The size of your garden doesn't matter. The source of what you're trading matters. If you grew it at home — even if "home" is a quarter acre in Royal City — you're welcome.

No-shows = strikes

If you agree to a meet-up and don't show up without messaging ahead, you get a strike. The strike ladder is below. Three strikes pauses your account for 30 days. Five strikes removes your account for the season. Strikes reset each growing season (March 1).

"Without messaging ahead" means no email to the trader before the agreed meet time. If your kid is sick, your truck broke, or the weather is dangerous — message. You don't get a strike for a messaged no-show. You get a strike for a silent one.

Disputes go through the maintainer

If a swap goes wrong — quantity was short, items were rotten, behavior was unsafe — email douglas@gordenwebdesign.com within 48 hours of the meet-up. We mediate by email handshake, look at both sides, and decide on a remedy (usually a strike on the offender, sometimes a removal, occasionally nothing if both sides behaved reasonably).