How To Organize Your Seeds or Confessions of a Seedaholic

I found I spent a lot of time sifting through boxes. And organizing them: Fall sow, Spring sow, Winter sow on the mat, I wondered whether there was a better way. Then I read about someone who organized their seeds in binders with pocket pages. Ooooh, good idea.

So I bought binders, index and pocket pages, and went to work. But the binders got wet from the condensation and were too big to put in a box. The binders went into a drawer and ended up containing “save” seed, and the seed I couldn’t bring myself to throw away. They also made a good place for “share” seeds as people could just look through the binder and pick what they wanted.

Then I began using different sizes of baggies in the boxes, labeling them with more specific instructions. But it was still a matter of sifting through those boxes, all the boxes, whenever I would plant so I didn’t miss anything.

About a year ago I started selling seeds with a friend, and RobinSeeds.com was born. Now it was really getting complicated and there was a lot more seed, so the cigar box method was born. This works for me. I can see what I have at a glance and I can put notes in the individual boxes. Here are some pictures of my cigar box seed file. Sometimes you can find these boxes on Ebay. I also found a site that sells plain tin boxes, perfect for the seedaholic!

Whatever method of storing seeds works for you, growing from seed is worth the effort. I’ll never forget the first time I told someone, who was admiring my garden, that I grew a lot of the plants from seed. The look of awe in their eyes, and the surprised statement: “You grew these from seeds? Wow.”

You can find my seeds and other home gardeners' seeds at RobinSeeds.com
We also have a new ETSY store.