Seed Storage Solution
We’ve been at this farming thing for over 25 years. After all these years we’ve finally taken the time to come up with a method to organize our large collection of seeds. Our seeds have always been stored in big plastic totes. Sometimes the different seed pack varieties were rubber-banded together—a bundle of broccoli seeds. kale, etc.— making it slightly easier to find what you’re looking for in the big bins, but mostly it was pure chaos. We would have to take all the seed packets out of the bins to find the one packet we were looking for. Argh! This always drove me crazy but seed planting season is busy season so I never got around to organizing them……until now. Before committing to the storage method that I’m about to share, I did about an hour of internet research to see other folks seed storage solutions. I saw some people using these plastic 4” x 6” photo storage boxes and thought it was a brilliant idea. Although, we have a lot of seeds! So I thought about how I could group the seeds together into several storage boxes. After some thought, I purchased 4 photo storage boxes (I found them on eBay) and eagerly anticipated their arrival.
Above you can see my 4 photo storage boxes all handy dandy labeled alongside our bin of bulk seeds. We have another bin of bulk seeds as well (not pictured) that’s full of seeds we’ve grown and seeds such as beans that are too big be stored in the 4” x 6” photo storage boxes. I chose the four categories for the seed boxes based on what I’m looking to plant at different times of the year, and specific crops we grow. I might eventually reorganize the boxes, or purchase another, to make one specifically for crops that are started indoors and transplanted out.
Spring & Fall Crops
Dye Plants
Summer Crops
Herbs & Ornamental Flowers
The individual 4” x 6” seed boxes within are all labeled as well. Below you can see the inside of our spring & fall seed box. If you want to learn about what we plant in early spring check out this post. Inside this box is just about all of the cold hardy crop seeds I’m looking for when I go to plant the first beds in spring and the last in late summer.
A peek inside our spring & fall seed storage box
To really bring this project up to next level status, I made a reorder form for each of the boxes so we can highlight anything that we run out of when we’re planting. When I make our next seed order I’ll gather all the forms so I know exactly what we’re out of. On the forms I specified the seed pack size that we prefer as well, because I spend too much time trying to figure that out when I’m ordering seeds.
Oh my gosh who am I even?! This is so exciting! This project took quite some time all said and done. An hour of research, a day of seed organizing and printing labels, and another few hours to do the seed pack size research and make the reorder forms, but man was that time well spent. It will save us so much time going forward.
*I should mention that I’m skeptical about the plastic snap closures that hold the boxes shut. They’re flimsy and I’m expecting them to break. I imagine the boxes will eventually be held shut with rubber-bands which I think will be a fine enough solution. Something to consider though.
Our spring and fall crop seed box and reorder form.
Here’s a photo from last week when I planted our spring crops in our hoop house. It was so amazing to just grab my spring seed box and get right to work planting. No time wasted searching for what I needed (which often leads to discovering that we don’t even have what we need).
I easily found the peas in the clearly labeled bulk seed bin along with some oats that I planted as a cover crop. These bins also have reorder forms. Being organized is a true game changer. I plan to do a few more crucial farm organizing projects this season and will try to share them here. I hope this inspires you to get your seed situation in order. I’d love to hear how you organize your seeds in the comments!
