Herman's Garden donation received

Last week we received a small cardboard box full of seed packets ranging from tomatoes and peppers to lettuce and turnips. The seeds were a donation by Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah, Iowa through a program called Herman's Garden. Seed Savers Exchange is a non-profit dedicated to preserving heirloom varieties of vegetables, fruits, and flowers. Heirloom varieties are unique in that they have been passed down through many generations of gardeners through the practice of seed-saving from year to year. Through the Herman's Garden program, Seed Savers donates old seeds that were not sold the previous year to school gardens, non-profit organizations, and community gardens. In exchange, they ask the recipients to save some of their seeds and pass them on. This year at the community garden we will be growing and saving Tiger's Eye beans, a variety grown for dry beans. Beans are one of the easiest vegetables to save seed because varieties do not cross-pollinate. We will incorporate planting and harvesting the beans into the educational program for kids and at the end of the season give away some of the beans to be planted next year.