Organizing and Storing Seeds

How do you store your seeds? In a box, a bag, a big jumbled mess on a shelf? And where? In the garage, the storage room, inside your fridge? Planting seeds and keeping track of what you have can be hard if you aren't organized.

In this post we will talk about the HOW and WHERE to store your seeds for best organization and preservation.

HOW

There are many ways to store your plant seeds as I'm sure you know! But, I'll just give you a few ideas if you are wanting to be more organized.

To start, you can keep them in the packs they came in if bought commercially of course. You can also use snack or sandwich sized bags to make sure no precious seeds fall out. If you save seeds yourself, the ziplock bags also work great. Just make sure to label with the exact cultivar and the date so you don't forget how old they are next year!

Now that you have all the seeds secured, where should you put them to keep them organized?

Accordion Style File Folders

I use an accordion style file folder to store my seeds. It's small, but folds out to be bigger. It's size is manageable to haul around with me to the garden and store easily. And it closes so I'm not worried about the seeds falling out.

It's pretty thin once all the seeds are inside, so I can tuck it under my arm and take it to my seed starting trays or outside to the garden.

You could order your seeds alphabetically if that works best for you. I personally like to order them chronologically by the approximate planting time. So my first categories are cold root veggies and cold greens and then cold other. Meaning plants like lettuce, carrots, beets, peas, broccoli, etc. are at the beginning. Then I have the warmer weather vegetables like tomatoes, peppers, melons, squash and more. And at the end I have some categories for flowers and herbs which have a variety of planting dates.

Binders

Source

If using a file folder isn't your jive, how about 3 ring binders with plastic pocket style inserts? Trading card plastic inserts are really useful here too like the picture below.

Source

You could use tabs on the sides in the same way as I used the file folder tabs above. You could even have a different colored binder for each type of seeds. Like Green for vegetables, purple for fruit, and pink for flowers for example. You might even take notes about each cultivar for better results the next year.

Plastic Storage Containers

There are a ton of different types of storage containers. Here's an example I found on Amazon. These snap closed and are stackable. They are clear, so it would be easy to see what's inside and you could make a big label and tape it on the front for better organization.

Amazon

I'm sure there are more ways to organize your seeds well. Do you organize a different awesome way? Let me know in the comments!

Where

First of all, what do seeds need in order to germinate?

• moisture 
• appropriate temperature (generally warmer)
• light after they sprout 

So to store seeds, we really want the opposite conditions. The seeds need to be thoroughly dry before storing (if saving your own seeds), and they need to be stored in dry conditions. Seeds can be stored in a refrigerator or in a cool dark room. Generally a garage or a warm sunny room would not be an ideal place for seed storage. If you live in a humid area, store the seeds in an air tight container with a desiccant pack or dry milk powder (wrapped in tissue paper, paper towels, or a reusable tea bag).

Source

I personally store my seeds in the refrigerator in the accordion style file folder as seen in the pictures above. I live in a dry climate, so I haven't used any drying agents with my seeds and have had good success with this method. I have quite a few seeds that are older and yet they still germinate each year.

Let me know in the comments how you store your seeds. Have any questions? Let me know below as well!

Happy Gardening!