Seed Organization

I can’t be the only one with this problem – Storing and organizing left over seed. I’ve tried several different methods over the last year, none of which were terribly successful. Initially, I taped the seed packets closed and put them in an old school-supplies box. This was adequate until I needed back in those seed packets. Every time I had to cut the tape to re-open the seed packets, the packet itself degraded a little more. Also, there was no organization to the box. When I needed a specific packet, I had to sort through everything in the box to find it.

Next I put the different varieties of seed packets in their own labeled baggies. I had a plastic sandwich bag for all my different tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, etc. This helped with the organization, but the seed leaked out of the seed packets and soon I had bags of miscellaneous tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers.
So here’s my latest attempt:

Seed book

I tri-folded the seed packets and slid them into clear plastic business card holder sheets. Each sheet holds 10 seed packets. I can actually read the seed packets, and so far, I don’t think that any seed has been able to escape the packets. The image above is my test run. I am going to take it on a trip to share with some gardening friends. If the seeds all stay put, I will put my other (20-30) seed packets in the protector sheets and organize it so that each sheet is dedicated to a plant type (i.e.: berries, carrots, peppers, tomatoes, greens, etc.).I also put white ruled paper behind each sheet and plan to catalog planting /germination notes for each seed I plant in 2012. Hopefully this seed catalog/garden diary will be the answer to my seed storage and organization prayers.

If anyone out there has a good method that works for them, I would love to hear about it. I’ll even post it here (with your permission) to share with others.