After you take a seed inventory, it is important to organize your seeds. This helps ensure that your seeds are easily accessible and aren’t forgotten when the time comes to start seeds or to direct seed.
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Why is it important to organize your seeds?
- It saves you time during the busyness of the gardening season. No more scouring for the seeds you need.
- After you organize your seeds, they have a home and you know exactly where to put them. Thus, eliminating the decision making process of where to put them when you are finished with them.
- It helps you use the seeds that you already have. Since you know where your seeds are, you can easily see whether or not you have the seeds you need or if you need to order.
- As long as you put them back where they belong after you organize them, it keeps them protected from the elements and from pests
6 Steps to organize your seeds
- Take a seed inventory
- Determine how you will categorize your seeds.
- Identify how you will store your seeds
- Gather all of your seeds
- Place seeds in storage container
- Label containers, if applicable
1. Take a seed inventory
Taking a seed inventory is an important first step in organizing your seeds. It helps you determine what seeds you have and what seeds you may need to order. I have a whole blog post on how to take a seed inventory. You can read it here.
2. Determine how to categorize your seeds
This step is personal to you and how you will best utilize your seeds. It may take a couple of years to develop a system that works best for you. Some ideas include categorizing seeds by:
- Season or Planting Time
- Plant Type (i.e. brassicas, tomatoes, herbs, roots)
- Crop (i.e. cauliflower, cherry tomatoes, beets)
Over the years, we have settled on the following categories:
- Herbs
- High Tunnel (these are specific seeds we only grow in our high tunnel)
- Cucumbers
- Melons
- Salanova
- Spinach
- Rutabaga
- Kohlrabi
- Microgreens
- Perennial
- Squash
- Swiss Chard
- Kale
- Misc.
- Personal (these are seeds we want to try, but not necessarily at a market garden scale)
- Eggplant
- Brussels
- Turnips
- Cabbage
- Beets
- Leeks/Onions
- Supplies (we use this to store our Sharpie Extreme markers, tape for labeling, small hand seeder, etc.)
- Greens
- Winter Squash
- Okra
- Broccoli
- Carrots
- Peppers (field)
- Cauliflower
- Lettuce
- Tomatoes (field)
3. determine how you will store you seeds
There are many ways to store your seeds. I have used a binder with sheet protectors, shoe box, 6 qt storage box, tote, but those just didn’t work well for me. I was still having to shuffle through them to find the seeds I was looking for.
A couple of years ago, I finally discovered storing seeds in a photo storage box and it has been working well. We use this method for seeds that we have smaller quantities of. It is also great that you can pull out the smaller case of seeds you need to use without having to to sort through everything or take it all out to the garden with you.
Now that we have a market garden, we order larger quantities of certain crops and still store those in a tote, either in the seed bags or in jars. We haven’t perfected our system for these yet.
4. Gather all of your seeds
If you are completing this on the same day that you took your seed inventory, you should already have all of your seeds easily accessible. If not, gather them so they are all in one spot. Once you have your seeds, sort them by the categories that you decided in step 2.
5. Place seeds in your storage container
Take each category of seed packets and place them into the storage container that you chose in step 3.
6. Label your containers, if applicable
If you are using the photo storage box method, I like to label each of the individual boxes using a label maker. However, you can write them on with Sharpie or using tape and marker. It doesn’t have to be super complicated or elaborate. Labelling just helps you stay even further organized.
If you are using a binder, you may want to use dividers to divide your categories so you are able to find them quickly
Tips and Tricks
First and foremost, don’t overcomplicate it. Keep it simple and organize your seeds in a way that works for you. If you have a group of family and/or friends close to you, get together and organize your seeds together! You could maybe even have some sort of seed swap at the same time.
Products Mentioned in This Post to help you organize your seeds
- Photo Storage Box
- Label Maker
- Sharpie (I prefer to use the Sharpie Extreme because they are fade resistant)
- Binder
- Binder sleeves
- Binder dividers
- Small storage box
- Tote
More Gardening Content:
- Steps to Take Now to Prepare for the Upcoming Gardening Season
- How to Start Seeds Indoors Using Grow Lights
- How to Start Seeds Indoors Without Grow Lights
SOme of our favorite places to order seeds:
Some of oUr Favorite Gardening Books:
- The First-Time Gardener: Growing Vegetables: All the know-how and encouragement you need to grow – and fall in love with! – your brand new food garden by Jessica Sowards
- The New Organic Grower, 3rd Edition: A Master’s Manual of Tools and Techniques for the Home and Market Gardener by Eliot Coleman
- The Tiny But Mighty Farm: Cultivating High Yields, Community, and Self-Sufficiency from a Home Farm – Start growing food today – Meet the best … yourself, your family, and your neighbors by Jill Ragan
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