Join the Seed Library at the Round Valley Public Library for One Seed, One Community, a community-wide seed initiative bringing us together through the annual celebration and preservation of one unique food crop in our beautiful, remote valley.
One Seed, One Community is an opportunity for us to share the experience of planting, growing, harvesting, and appreciating a specially chosen regional plant variety together as a community.
One Seed, One Community provides a means to collaborate, empower and provide resources to support our community in developing our own locally-adapted, community-shared food crops.
The project targets both new and seasoned gardeners, providing an important opportunity for the two to interact and learn from each other.
We also solve a seed saving problem: oftentimes, gardens are too small to grow the requisite number of plants needed to preserve genetic diversity for a variety. Growing as a community allows this burden to be shared across a number of gardens.
At harvest time, we encourage gardeners to drop off a small portion of their harvested seeds to the Seed Library to become one with the harvests of other community members and provide a supply of seeds for the next season’s gardeners.
2024: One Seed, One Community will offer a choice between a bush bean and a pole bean; both are dual purpose beans and can be eaten as snap beans or allowed to dry on the vine and be harvested as dried beans.
The common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) probably has its origins in Mesoamerica and was domesticated about 7,500 years ago.
Turkey Craw is a dual-purpose pole bean and delicious when young, green, and snappy. As a dry bean, it is sweet, rich, buttery, and meaty in taste. Great canned or frozen, too. According to folklore, a hunter shot a turkey and removed a bean from its craw, the bean was later planted and saved, hence the name. The Turkey Craw bean has been designated by Slow Food USA as an outstandingly tasty, culturally important, and endangered heirloom from Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, and it is listed in their Ark of Taste as a way to invite everyone to take action to help protect it.
And since not everyone has a trellis for growing beans, we are also offering a bean with a bush habit. Alice Sunshine has excellent green beanflavor with a rich sweetness and nice crunch. It’s good dual-purpose variety for both snap and dry beanproduction. Alice Sunshine is a wonderfully productive short-season bean that was bred by the late great bean breeder Robert Lobitz. Tasty six-inch snap beans appear roughly 50 days after planting, and dry beans about a month later.
Sow…what do you need to know?
As beans are mostly self-pollinating, they’re perfect for beginning seed savers!
Grab
The Seed Library is open during regular library hours.
If you haven’t already, complete a Seed Library Membership Form.
Find your packet of beans in the seed catalog. (Look in the drawer marked “Beans, Green-Pole” for Turkey Craw beans. Look in the drawer marked “Beans, Green-Bush” for Alice Sunshine beans.)
Log the item in the “Borrowed Seeds” column on the back of the Membership Form and turn in your form at the circulation desk.
Sign up for One Seed , One Community email reminders throughout this growing season so you can be invited to our “weigh-in” celebration in November!
Grow
Since you are saving seed, you want to plant your crop early enough for the beans to mature to the dry bean stage before frost returns, so plant your seeds mid-May to early June. (If you are growing bush beans, don’t plant them all out at once, you’ll want to plant every couple of weeks through June or early-July to have a long harvest period.) Designate at least a couple of your early-sown, most vigorous plants as plants you will save seed from and don’t pick green bean pods from them. This way you will be sure to have at least a handful of beans to return to the Seed Library!
Common beans are self-pollinating annuals and varieties don’t readily cross. But insect-pollination can occur, so when growing beans for seed keep different bean varieties separated from each other by at least 20 feet; this should help maintain varietal purity.
Sow the seeds 1 inch deep in heavy soil or 1½ inches deep in light soil after the danger of frost has passed and the soil has warmed to 65°F.
Plant 4 inches (for pole beans) or 6 inches (for bush beans) apart in rows separated by 2 to 2½ feet.
Harvest
As the pods begin to turn tan and dry out, stop watering.
Pods should be left on the vine until they are brown and crisp.
Pick the pods from the plant when the seeds inside are hard.
Split the pods by hand, or fill a pillowcase with seedpods, tie the opening shut, and carefully walk in place on top of it to free the seeds.
Winnowing can be used to separate seed from chaff. Pour the seed/chaff from one basket to another, letting the wind blow away the chaff.
Dry the seeds on a screen until they can pass the “shatter test.” Put a seed on a hard surface and strike it with a hammer. If it shatters rather than squishes, it is ready to store.
Share
At harvest time, set a small amount of your beans aside and bring them to the Round Valley Public Library to be combined with the harvests of others. (Try to attend the “Weigh-in” in early November!)
Be sure to add your returned beans to the “Donation” column on the back of your Membership Form.
Community
The real beauty of One Seed, One Community is the opportunity it creates for us to come together as a community, putting seed to soil to honor and learn more about the food that sustains us.
Plan on taking part in the “Great Weigh-In” the first Saturday in November, when we celebrate our community’s participation in the project. Be sure to sign up for email notifications here so you don’t miss this event!
Thank you for taking part in One Seed, One Community.
The One Seed, One Community program was created in 2014 by Hillie Salo of Silicon Valley Grows and has since spread around the world.
One Seed, One Community
One Seed, One Community is an opportunity for us to share the experience of planting, growing, harvesting, and appreciating a specially chosen regional plant variety together as a community.
One Seed, One Community provides a means to collaborate, empower and provide resources to support our community in developing our own locally-adapted, community-shared food crops.
The project targets both new and seasoned gardeners, providing an important opportunity for the two to interact and learn from each other.
We also solve a seed saving problem: oftentimes, gardens are too small to grow the requisite number of plants needed to preserve genetic diversity for a variety. Growing as a community allows this burden to be shared across a number of gardens.
At harvest time, we encourage gardeners to drop off a small portion of their harvested seeds to the Seed Library to become one with the harvests of other community members and provide a supply of seeds for the next season’s gardeners.
2024: One Seed, One Community will offer a choice between a bush bean and a pole bean; both are dual purpose beans and can be eaten as snap beans or allowed to dry on the vine and be harvested as dried beans.
The common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) probably has its origins in Mesoamerica and was domesticated about 7,500 years ago.
Turkey Craw is a dual-purpose pole bean and delicious when young, green, and snappy. As a dry bean, it is sweet, rich, buttery, and meaty in taste. Great canned or frozen, too. According to folklore, a hunter shot a turkey and removed a bean from its craw, the bean was later planted and saved, hence the name. The Turkey Craw bean has been designated by Slow Food USA as an outstandingly tasty, culturally important, and endangered heirloom from Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, and it is listed in their Ark of Taste as a way to invite everyone to take action to help protect it.
And since not everyone has a trellis for growing beans, we are also offering a bean with a bush habit. Alice Sunshine has excellent green bean flavor with a rich sweetness and nice crunch. It’s good dual-purpose variety for both snap and dry bean production. Alice Sunshine is a wonderfully productive short-season bean that was bred by the late great bean breeder Robert Lobitz. Tasty six-inch snap beans appear roughly 50 days after planting, and dry beans about a month later.
Sow…what do you need to know?
As beans are mostly self-pollinating, they’re perfect for beginning seed savers!
Grab
Grow
Harvest
Share
Community
The real beauty of One Seed, One Community is the opportunity it creates for us to come together as a community, putting seed to soil to honor and learn more about the food that sustains us.
Plan on taking part in the “Great Weigh-In” the first Saturday in November, when we celebrate our community’s participation in the project. Be sure to sign up for email notifications here so you don’t miss this event!
Thank you for taking part in One Seed, One Community.
The One Seed, One Community program was created in 2014 by Hillie Salo of Silicon Valley Grows and has since spread around the world.