Getting my seeds organized for gardening

Last fall after I put my garden to bed for the year, I decided to organize my seeds. I have lots of seeds, some I bought and many others that I saved from my own plants. I am always getting confused as to what I have vs. what I need, so I really needed to straighten this mess out! 

Especially since I love to try new varieties each year, and sometimes I will find I already bought the new seeds I wanted...but forgot because everything is a jumbled mess! *sigh*

My usual method had the seed packets in small individual bins. I always separated them into 3 categories: flowers, herbs and edibles. I've always used a 'seed wallet' when I go out into the garden to plant. While this worked when I had a small garden, with my recent expansions...I needed more organization. 

I bought one of those photo boxes from the craft store, which works really well for seed packets. It holds a lot of store bought packets! They sell them at craft stores like Michael's and come in lots of pretty colors and patterns. I do like when my storage looks good, don't you?

I decided to try the photo album idea that was so popular last spring. Now I have 2 types of organization going on and I think it's going to work better than ever!
Related reading: How to read and understand a seed packet.

Organizing seeds

Let's start with my daily 'seed wallet' first. Every time I head out to the garden to plant, I take what I call my 'seed wallet'. It's really just a coupon clutch. It works great to hold the seed packets that I'm planning on using that day. It has a zipper so I don't have to worry about seed packets falling out when I toss it back in mygardening basket between using different seeds.

I don't like to take the whole container of seed packets out to the garden with me, that's just asking for trouble! My luck I'd spill them all. So this daily seed organizer keeps the packets separated and dry and I can just zip it closed and throw it in my gardening basket. It works great.

Originally I used one of those cheap plastic coupon clutches from a dollar store. My old one finally fell apart after about 6 years, so last year I got a brand new one with a zipper.

That takes care of keeping the seeds straight when I'm actually using them. What about storage though? This is where that photo album idea came in. 

I bought 3 different mini photo albums from the dollar store. (I actually buy a lot of gardening supplies from the dollar tree!) I used 1 album for each of my 3 types of seeds. In one album is all my herbs, another holds my flower seeds and still a third for my vegetable seeds.

All I did was put a different seed packet in each picture sleeve. If I had more than 1 packet, I put them in the same sleeve with the oldest one on top.

Hopefully that will keep me using them in order! This worked for everything but the largest seeds. Peas, beans and corn ended up staying in their original bin. They were just too wide for the albums! However, the albums actually fit into the photo storage box!

This weekend I pulled everything out to get some flowering plants started early. I was happy to see that everything was still organized unlike those bins that would sometimes get knocked over. I easily found my lavender, chamomile and basil so I could start the seeds. 

Normally I don't start seeds quite this early, but these are my favorites and I keep them in the house as long as possible. I can't wait for them to start growing!

~L

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