My Seeds Don't Live in a Shoebox Anymore

Organizing seeds, whiskey fungus and friendly grouse

The brown shoe box is hard to close. It’s full of seed packets bought from local nurseries and others that arrived as part of a seed-of-the-month club and many more which I ordered during a seed buying binge during Pittsburgh’s colder months. Some packets have rubber bands around them and others are collected in bigger paper envelopes in an attempt at an organizational system.

Last season, it became clear that this old Keen shoebox, tucked in a corner shelf in the basement, is not the ideal way to store my seeds. It’s a mess.

Brooke noticed the shortfalls of my shoebox seed storage and gifted me an old card catalog for my last birthday. Now I can pull out one of the two drawers and access my seeds. I can flip through them with ease and separate them out according to types of flowers and vegetables or even according to planting date. I’ll be honest, I haven’t totally decided on an organizational system yet.

It’s the perfect size – turns out that seed packets are about the same size as catalog cards – and can easily accommodate my collection of a hundred or so varieties of seed.

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I wanted to hear from all you about the way you store your seeds so I’ve sent this first part of the newsletter to all subscribers. Where do you store your seeds? Shoe boxes? Card catalogs? Somewhere else?

For all of you paid subscribers, this edition of Rootbound Clippings continues below: