Seed Storage

Seeds are amazing. I grew a 13 foot tall tomato plant this year, and it all started with this minuscule miracle no bigger than the letters I'm typing. My whole life I've chopped up tomatoes and tossed the seeds into a trashcan without a single thought for their potential. What hubris.

The idea of seed saving really intimidated me in the beginning. I just knew nothing about the whole foreign and mysterious process. And yet, seeds are basic to our existence on pretty much every level... it seemed important to figure out how to interact with them. So I'm learning.

At this point, I've saved seed from melons, sunflowers, herbs, squashes, beans and peas. I've inherited saved seeds from friends and relatives. This has contributed to a wonderful, but annoying menagerie of ziploc baggies and random containers that is difficult to store, much less organize. To rein in the chaos, I decided to make seed envelopes out of an extra Baker Creek seed catalog. The pages are so beautiful. Naturally, I'm going to end up ordering even more seeds before I've finished making all of these envelopes...

You can find envelope templates all over the place - other gardening blogs like this one have links and variations. I was happy not to follow a strict template. I made each page into a simple square and used simple folds. Each of my envelopes have slightly different dimensions. I also didn't mess with lovely printed labels. Masking tape, magic marker, kid scissors and scotch tape were close at hand. 

Here's to a new year of planting, harvesting, learning, eating, sharing and chronicling the journey. Look at all of the things I could grow...