It is that time of year when we go through our seed storage boxes, toss out the seeds that didn’t work, the ones that didn’t sell and the old seed. Got to make room for new varieties and colors to come in for the 2018 season. The plan has been developed over the last several weeks and we did a rough count of the remaining seeds on hand. A comparison of our seed data base is showing that we are lacking some quantities of certain seeds so we are placing a few big orders again for the new season which starts in earnest this next week.
We order our seeds several times a year. Although we try and store our seeds as carefully as possible, if we do not need the seeds till later or in the summer for next year’s biennials, we hold off on purchasing all of the seeds. The seed companies have better storage facilities and can hold them under optimum conditions. We do order those seeds that seem to be very popular, hard to get and new to the market because we don’t want to miss out on a super special flower.
When seeds come in, we put the date on them and also the germination rate for each packet if we can get that information. All our seeds are stored alphabetically in little storage boxes. Each type of flower has a header card with the name and the approximate seed life. This makes it handy to know if we need to toss some seeds as too old. We try to bring in enough for a season but some big seed companies like Gloeckner offer seeds in 1000 seed packs which is sometimes too many for just 1 season.
Most of our seeds are stored in our cool dark basement office. We have found that there are several varieties that we store out in our little refrigerator in the garage. This fridge is from my Grandma’s home and is from the 1950s. It still keeps running, the only thing we fixed was the outlet cord. It is a great spot for cold storage and water for us when working out in the fields, we don’t have to tramp in to the house for a cold one.
There are many great resources to find out about seed saving and storage. We really like this book and find it very helpful.
So there we have it with our method of seed storage. We are always looking for better and more efficient ways of doing things, so if you would like to share your methods, we would love it hear how you save your seeds.
Next up: we will share our 2018 plan for growing flowers. Till then, thanks for dropping by.