The Best Ways to Organize and Store Seeds Throughout the Year.

The Best Ways to Organize and Store Seeds Throughout the Year.

Limiting exposure to light, air, and moisture will keep your seeds as viable as possible.

A foreseeable issue—where to store all your damn seeds—will arise at some point during your gardening endeavors. A box or stack will do at first, but eventually you'll realize you need some sort of library-style organization system. The viability of your seeds is impacted by storage, so it is important. What you should know is as follows.

There are guidelines for how long flower and vegetable seeds should be viable. Sorting your seeds once a year will help you ensure that none of them are past their sell-by dates. Although it's not a guarantee, older seeds have a higher chance of failing to germinate. Moisture, light exposure, and temperature are a few other elements that can impact how viable your seeds are. In place of the paper packages of the past, seed companies are increasingly shipping seeds in foil-lined containers. The length of time that seeds remain viable and, consequently, germination rates, are affected by how you choose to store your seeds.

Airtight storage and organization are offered by photo boxes.

These picture holders are among the most widely used methods I've seen gardeners use to keep their seeds organized. One container holds numerous 4x6 airtight subcontainers, which are about the size of seed packets and photo prints, respectively.

Pros: The upside is that you can easily keep all your tomatoes together, all your peppers in another subcontainer, all your herbs together, etc. The outside container blocks the light and protects them from exposure to the air.

Cons: These sixteen subcontainers are the maximum allowed for your organization. You need a new box if you have a seventeenth category. You must also overflow to a second subcontainer if your tomato seeds don't fit in the first. These, in my opinion, are too heavy to use for simply browsing your seeds.

Although they can be easily expanded, binders offer less protection.

Gardeners have been using these binders for many years, inserting seed packets into the transparent pockets just like CDs.

Advantages: You can add new pages exactly where you need them to reorganize them and they are largely expandable. It's simple to get to your seeds and flip through them to find what you want. The majority of light would be blocked by a binder that is one solid color and holds all of the pages.

Cons: Because the clear sleeves are open, you're not really keeping all air and moisture out, and simply holding the binder upside down can cause you to lose seeds. Due to seed packets, some pages grow bulky.

This seed saver kit will impress you if you like consistency or save seeds.

Although I've never seen it in use, this seed-saving briefcase seems like a real pro solution if you're saving seeds on your own. It's an airtight case that protects against light and contains sixty seed-saving vials.

Advantages: Store your seeds in vials so you can rearrange them as needed instead of using envelopes that won't seal again. The case appears solid and safe.

Cons: If you have too many or large of seeds (I'm thinking of large beans, corn, peas, etc.) for a vial, you may not be able to fit them all in. ), this is not a good answer. And just like with other solutions, you require a new case if you require 61 vials rather than 60.

Use storage boxes to keep things simple.

I like to keep things straightforward. These ArtBoxes are compact, lightweight, and equipped with dividers. I can pick them up and move quickly because of the handles, and they stack. I store seeds in lined, light-resistant envelopes.

They are inexpensive, straightforward, and easy to expand (just keep adding more until you really need a new case).

The downside is that they aren't light-safe unless you use those light-safe envelopes.

.