Last year was our first time having a garden. We just bought some random seeds from random places and started planting. Since that time we have done a lot of researching, planning, discovering, and failing. I’m sure we have much more of all of that to come. We decided that next time we wanted to start right and that meant (among a million other things) using heirloom seeds.

First, we shopped around a bit for some reasonably priced heirloom seeds and bought most of what we needed. We also had a few random seeds left over from last year that were not heirloom that we were going to use up and get rid of. We had some seeds from Jon’s Mom from her garden. And lastly we harvested some of our crowder peas to attempt our hand at keeping and using our own seeds. We dried some of the crowder peas successfully. We had the second attempt mold. Because of the mold, the third time we thought we would not air dry them but try drying them in the oven on low like we read online. That worked for some and well I burnt some because I forgot about them and didn’t set a timer.

Here we are only on our second garden and had seeds in store bought packets, seeds in sandwich baggies, seeds in small mailing envelopes, and seeds in boxes from orders online. I could already see we needed to come up with a seed storage method.

I’ve seen some online that have cute little boxes they put all their seeds in. I thought those boxes were just so cute. I even looked randomly since last year for a box that in my mind would fit the bill without being too expensive. I never found anything like the image I had in my head. To be quite honest the more I thought about it I wondered where in the world would we put a box no matter how darn cute it was?!? I am not exaggerating at all. We have no place to put even a cute little box except for the middle of the dining room table.

So at some point over the winter or early spring I saw a pin or blog or something somewhere online about using a file system. I did not pin it or bookmark it. I just took a mental note of it and kept on going. I do wish I could remember where I saw it. The example I saw was in an actual small filing cabinet or filing box with file folders. Then at some point I saw the idea to use expanding file folders. You know the kind that are vinyl or plastic and have a little stretchy piece of elastic that holds it closed?  So this is what I had stuck in my mind to use. It was portable and could be just taken out to the garden if we wanted to. It was vinyl or plastic so it could easily be wiped off if it got dirty. It would be relatively durable. And it couldn’t cost much!

So today I finally bought one at Dollar General. I got a green one because it was for the garden. I know, I am quite strange that way.

Green Expanding File Folder for Seeds

I wrote “Seeds” on the outside with a sharpie. Yes, it bugs me that “Seeds” is off center. I may be a little OCD. It came with adhesive labels to attach to the tabs of the separating file folders. This one has 12 sections which I think may be enough for us. However, they do come with more separating folders up to 24 I believe.  Some of our labels are specific while others are more of a generic category.

We then just put all of our packets, envelopes, and baggies in the corresponding section making sure each packet, envelope, and baggie was sufficiently labeled and had the date.

It is all so tidy and there seems to be so much room left in there where before I felt like we had seeds all over the place. I am excited about this simple little organization of our seeds. Disarray stresses me out…lol. And because it isn’t too big I just had to find a little bit of space to slide it into the bookshelf. I love it!

Of course we will probably have seeds all over the place soon as they are drying, but once they are properly dried then we will be able to neatly store them away.

How do you organize your seeds? Or do you?