Storing and organizing seeds for the garden

My name’s Charlotte… I’m a beginner gardener… and I have a seed habit.

I’m not afraid to admit it. I can’t help it. I go to garden centres and everything looks so good. And then I log onto the heirloom seed sellers websites and I can’t help myself. Suddenly I’m coming home from the garden centre with a bag stuffed with seeds, or I’ve got packages arriving in the mail.

I’ll be honest, it was starting to get a bit out of control.

I had to get things organised. I didn’t know what I’d planted, what I’d run out of, what I had left to plant, when I should plant it, or even what I owned. I went online and I ordered a load of gripseal bags, some silica gel sachets, and some wage slip envelopes.

Each seed pack gets popped into it’s own bag as soon as I buy it. Then it gets stored in the alphabetical section of my organiser (unless it’s for planting this year – in which case it gets put in one of the 1-12 monthly sections). The monthly sections are really good – it means that something like Pak Choi I can sow and then just move back into the next section to be used again next month.

When the seed packs are opened I put a sachet of silica gel in with them – or when I collect seed from something that I’ve grown (in the wage envelopes).

Oh, and they get a little front sheet with instructions for planting on them. The new and improved versions have a QR code on the front too, so that I can just snap the packet with my phone when I’m in the garden and bring up the appropriate page on my wiki for that plant.

My next step is laser cut plant markers with the same QR code on. (Nerd.)