I plant a lot of flowers and vegetables so I have always kept an assortment of seeds. I buy seed packets from the stores when I think I need something new or I see something on clearance I may want to try or need.
I belong to a seed membership where I get a couple of packets a month. I order batches of seeds from online stores when I am looking for varieties not available in my stores or after season when they are on clearance. I harvest and keep seeds from my garden, both veges and flowers.
Needless to say, I usually have a lot of seed packets, as well as seeds in baggies or little jars, or envelopes, etc.
I am a pretty organized person. However, sometimes things don’t get put back exactly where they should be and over time things get disorganized, especially in the rush of spring planting. My seeds were always in a large Tupperware type box. Organized alphabetically, veges in one box, flowers in another. Herbs, perennials and annuals all separated from each other. I also have a list of all my seeds in Excel which gets updated every spring so that I know what I have and don’t. That list also includes details such as planting and flowering times, flower color, height, etc. It helps me when I am trying to figure out what to start for planting in a certain location.
This is how they are stored.
Sometimes it is overwhelming as I need to go through and pull every seed packet out and compare it to my list and put it back in the box in the order it should be. If there are more packets then fit in the box, it requires a little squeezing. I have always known I needed to come up with a more organized way for my seeds, but had never quite figured out how.
Until I discovered these.
These storage containers have taken my seed storage to a whole new level. I have them separated by type (i.e., vege, annual, perennial, herb, or misc). Within each category I have them separated by item such as beans-bush or beans-pole, or pumpkin or marigold, etc. You get the picture.
Each item gets their own little box (or more if needed) and labeled. Each category has it’s own label color for easy reference. Vegetables have a green label. Flowers have yellow. Herbs have white.
If I am ready to plant radishes, I can just grab the radish box. All of my seeds are in there. I can choose which I want to plant and return the unused seeds to the individual box and then back to the main box. Easy peasy.
If I have multiple individual boxes of a certain type as I do with my peas, once they are used up, I can consolidate, remove the label from one and use it for something else.
Also, if a seed packet happens to break open and spill seeds out, they are confined to their individual box and not mixed in with all of the other seeds.
This will be my first season using these storage containers. I have already put in some early starts so have dabbled a bit with them. I am excited to benefit from their simplicity in my planting endeavors this Spring.
Have you added anything new to your gardening tools that you are excited to use this Spring?