Organising Seeds

My Hardy Plant Society seeds arrived this morning. The Hardy Plant Society is a society for people who love hardy plants. They send an informative spring and autumn newsletter and, best of all, as a member, you are entitled to order 20 packets of seeds all donated by members. You can get some real treasures.

Exciting stuff but the arrival of yet more seeds highlighted that I needed a much better way to organise them. Last year I stored them in plastic food tubs: one for each sowing month. The March tub was overflowing and every time I wanted a particular seed, I had to search through all the seeds in that month to find it. I needed a new system. I searched for seed boxes online but they all seemed to organise by sowing month. So, I invested in a couple of small shoebox boxes, from Wilkinsons (£2 each). I made card dividers out of some scrap card and organised the seeds alphabetically.

I set up one box for seeds waiting to be sown and a second box for seeds already sown. If I am going to resow the seeds later in the year, for example hardy annuals in autumn, I leave them in the waiting to be sown box, otherwise I move them to the sown box after sowing. It is working really well so far. It takes only seconds to find the particular seed packet I need and to file it away when I’ve finished with it. It does mean keeping a list of what I want to sow every month, but I find that works better for me anyway as I can tick off each seed as I sow it.