Amy Draiss
‘Tis the season for harvesting and storing seeds. Saving seeds is a great way to get more of your favorite flowers and vegetables next year and is also very budget-friendly. You can even swap seeds with friends and neighbors to get even more free flowers!
Harvesting seeds is one of my favorite fall activities and I have been searching high and low for the best product to help me organize and store seeds for next year’s garden. I have tried seed storage containers of every variety: paper bags, old packets, plastic baggies, jars, and old plastic deli meat containers to hold various packets of seeds, but they always end up a jumbled mess.
Last fall, my partner found the perfect seed storage solution. He bought a simple craft bead organizer from Amazon that turned out to be a game changer. All our seeds are labeled, organized, and ready for next spring.
How to Store Seeds
As autumn begins to wander in, your fall seed harvest should be taking place. Collect seeds on a warm, dry day when flower seed pods are brown, dry and sound like a rattle when shaken. Bring a sharp pair of pruners or scissors to cut seed pods and flower heads from their stems. Make sure to bring pre-labeled bags with you, so you can keep them all separate from each other for easier organization.
Bring your newly harvested seeds inside and lay them out on parchment paper to dry for about a week. Moisture is the enemy of seeds and will invite mold. After your seeds are completely dry, it is time to store them in a safe and dry environment to continue to prevent mold growth.
My Favorite Seed Storage and Organizer
A common way to store seeds is in paper bags or packets, but I have really enjoyed using this craft organizer from Amazon over the past year. There are 64 small boxes with lids that snap shut to securely store seeds of all kinds. These small boxes then slot into a larger storage box that has a carrying handle for easy transport to the garden, potting shed (if you’re lucky enough to have one!), or to your seed starting station.
The kit comes with stickers to label all your seeds for clear and easy organization, too. My partner and I spent part of an evening sorting through all our old seed packets, seeds collected in jars and random bags and put them all together in one, beautiful, organized storage solution. The sigh of relief from both of us when we had finished organizing was illustrative of how jumbled, messy, and stressful our previous seed storage technique was!
The one downside of this seed storage system is that some chunkier seeds don’t fit too well. Nasturtium seeds are too big to fit, but we purchased some paper seed packets from Amazon to store those rotund seeds. Otherwise, the boxes in this organizer fit the rest of my seeds perfectly and keep them safe and dry until I start seeds indoors as winter edges towards spring.
There is nothing more pleasing than to have all of your harvested seeds organized and ready for planting next year. Spring will be here before you know it and this will help you get ready to have the best garden yet. Hopefully this seed storage and organizer will become one your favorite gardening tool, too!
