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Vegetable Seeds


Teach

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It is legal, but you should go about it the legal way. If you bring them in your luggage it could go either way - depending on your luck. The legal way is to use a recognized commercial grower who has prepared and packaged the seeds to international shipping standards (I don't know the details). The invoice should contain the latin name of the plants. Then to a customs broker/shipper in Laredo Texas, who will then prepare the import document that the seeds are not on a prohibited list. Then they are shipped to your Mexican address.

The easy way is to contact a Chapala shipping company called iShop. For the princely sum of 20 pesos, the package will be sent to their business address with your name on it to pickup. There will be a 60 pesos customs charge, and shipping from Laredo. They will give the address in Laredo. I don't know anything about shipping from Canada into the U.S.A. I don't know if the Mexican customs will allow non-commericial shipped seeds.

Wait I just noticed you said onion and garlic sets - those are live? If so, that vastly complicates things. Live plants must be soil free and you have to obtain a phyto certificate which are expensive, hard to get, and require Spanish language abilities.

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Are you driving or flying? Actually you are not supposed to bring in plants without a very expensive permit and I doubt you want to spend thousands to get one.

If you are driving, hide them someplace. The worst that will happen is they will be confiscated.

If you are flying, hide them in pockets or someplace. The worst that will happen is they will be confiscated.

No mail service has permission to import seeds but the post office people don't care about seeds so they get through.

Mail them to yourself through regular Mexican mail. By the time they get here, you will be settled. To speed up delivery, tell your mail man you will give him an extra $50 pesos for the package. That will save you a week or more.

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Couple points here that I'm not sure I agree with. I used the term "sets" which perhaps is not the right term. I'm talking about the flower seeds from the top. I have Egyptian Walking Onions that form the onions on top of the plant and not in the soil. I don't differentiate sets not being seeds. They go dormant when harvested unless replanted. Just a seed by any other name. But they are never in contact with the ground or soil.

http://www.egyptianwalkingonion.com/

Garlic might be another story as it is harvested from the ground but my wife found a website stating that if the garlic was peeled that it could be brought in. The question then becomes - does that only mean the outer peel? If so then the garlic bulb should be able to be separated into individual cloves after peeling and be allowed? These are the grey areas that are unclear.

Also all my seed is made from open pollinated varieties that I collect and dry and make each year from that years harvest for next years crop. How do you get a brand name certification for home made seed? Might just be easier to just bring them and play dumb at the border.

Joco you asked if we were driving down.......Yes.

I'm thinking that if like Chillin sugested it is legal, if I don't have a few papers the worst that will happen is it will be confiscated. So I'll bring a small quantity with me rather than a large quantity and just test the waters. No packages, just loose seed.

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I've brought in many packages of seeds, but not sets. I like to donate organic and heirloom seeds to the Tues organic market growers.

Is this out near the Racquet Club? Although we bought 6 years ago in Chapala, last winter was our first winter down. Hoping to be full time in roughly a year.

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Gardening here in Chapala is a wonderful adventure. No shortage of seeds from the U.S.A., heritage or otherwise. I went in another direction selecting plants/seeds which grow best in 9-11 zones. Joco will set you straight on the heritage plants. She is growing heritage potatoes which were grown in Andes and were found by Cortez. Cortez took them to the Pacific Northwest to trade with the natives and a lot of the old strains survived. The trouble with sharing all these old gardener tales - you never get any work done!

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Can anyone tell me if it is legal to bring garden vegetable seeds and onion/garlic sets with me from Canada into Mexico?

I have a few heritage varieties that I've grown for decades and don't want to loose them. Thanks

Teach

http://www.aduanas.gob.mx/aduana_mexico/A_Preguntas_Frecuentes_Pasajeros.htm

The only seeds I see mentioned on the ADUANA list that are prohibited are poppy and marijuana seeds.

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http://www.aduanas.gob.mx/aduana_mexico/A_Preguntas_Frecuentes_Pasajeros.htm

The only seeds I see mentioned on the ADUANA list that are prohibited are poppy and marijuana seeds.

That is the way I read it also but some have said "they know of" seeds that have been confiscated. I don't know of any.

People come down all the time with seeds and have them mailed here so I doubt anyone cares about small amounts. If farmers are importing large amounts, then that's a different situation.

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Joco you asked if we were driving down.......Yes.

I'm thinking that if like Chillin sugested it is legal, if I don't have a few papers the worst that will happen is it will be confiscated. So I'll bring a small quantity with me rather than a large quantity and just test the waters. No packages, just loose seed.

Don't worry about it. They are looking for expensive items that they want you to pay duty on not some seeds.

I am interested in the walking onion. I'll trade you some of my seeds for a few seeds of it.

Unless the garlic is really special, there are garlic bubs here. You can also start garlic from seed. If you have a cooler for cold drinks, put the garlic bulb in a plastic bag in the cooler. Nobody at the border cares about a garlic bulb.

You can also buy true garlic seeds.

http://garden.lofthouse.com/true-garlic-seed.phtml

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Gardening here in Chapala is a wonderful adventure. No shortage of seeds from the U.S.A., heritage or otherwise. I went in another direction selecting plants/seeds which grow best in 9-11 zones. Joco will set you straight on the heritage plants. She is growing heritage potatoes which were grown in Andes and were found by Cortez. Cortez took them to the Pacific Northwest to trade with the natives and a lot of the old strains survived. The trouble with sharing all these old gardener tales - you never get any work done!

You know more about the true potato seeds than I do. With this lousy weather and no Sun I have had a hard time getting them to grow. I would like to see what they look like someday.

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It is the Mexican agriculture department that is concerned about seeds. There used to be "reality" series a long time ago (I haven't watched TV for years) based on the customs/immigration at an Australian airport. In Mexico there are also agricultural officers at every international airport, I know I talked to the one at Puerto Vallarta when I was trying to import some some genuine Mojito mint plants, which originated from Cuba. Sorry - I digressed. Anyways a Greek couple, returning to Australia, declared that they had some seeds to remind them of back home. They included the seed pods. The agricultural officer inspected them and they were infested with a very nasty beetle, which was definitely not welcomed there. So everything was destroyed. It is stories like this which keep them ever vigilant. They would be horrified to find in someone's luggage a seed potato with some soil left on it.

As a counterpoint, Mexico requires all seeds to be treated with fungicide since 1995. Commercial seeds are clearly marked "not for consumption". Now the problem is, as the market shifts to organic fruits and vegetables, the Mexican growers require organic seeds, which mostly come from the U.S.A.

http://www.seedquest.com/news.php?type=news&id_article=21897&id_region=9&id_category=48&id_crop=

Joco- what I find interesting is how politicized food has become. Corn, tomatoes, chiles, potatoes, amaranth -all originated in Latin America but now need special/expensive paperwork to bring them home. In the case of genetically modified corn, they have to pay an international corp for the seed, and annually for the right to grow it! In the case of amaranth, the Spanish conquest banned its growth because it was linked to pagan ceremonies. Now the big chemical companies call amaranth a 'superweed' because it is resistant to Roundup herbicide. The organic community calls amaranth a "superfood".

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Guest PalapaGirl

When we came through customs in Nuevo Laredo, I had an aloe plant that a friend had given me. It was in a pot with soil. It literally fell out the door at the custom agent's feet. She picked it up & placed it back in the car. We both pretended we had not seen it.

But, with a different agent, who knows?

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