We decided to organize our seeds. We have quite a collection. They’re mostly seeds collected from this year and a few from last year. My son gets really excited when we run into seeds for sale so I always buy him a packet or two…or ten. Grayson likes to keep his own collection of seeds, separate from mine. He keeps his in a bin with a handle so he can easily carry the seeds outside. I keep my seeds in the house in a wooden wine box.
We have been collecting seeds and we wanted to keep them in something interesting. We’ve been using plastic baggies to store our seeds but I think it’s better to keep them in paper so they are ventilated, (away from light and moisture). I found a wonderful template in a Fine Gardening magazine called, “Starting from Seed”.
It’s a template to make your own seed packets. It’s so easy an eight year old can do it. We printed out the template onto different colored construction paper. We cut it out, folded the edges on the dotted line and glued it shut with Elmer’s glue. I used a q-tip to put the Elmer’s glue on the edges. I taped the top closed so it would be easier to get it open once the packet is filled with the seeds. We made extra so we’d have empty packets ready for seeds we collect. Sure enough, right after we’d finished our project we found some Scarlett milkweed with pods bursting open with seeds. Those seeds went straight into a packet. You can download the template for the seed packets from the fine gardening website. WWW.finegardening.com/extras has many other fabulous and clever ideas.
Grayson calls this his box of treasure. He’s decided he’s going to start a business from this project…collecting and selling seeds. He said he would share with friends and family. He’s collected Jamaican pumpkin seeds, white lotus, lemon grass, Indian pepper bush, a fuscia vegetable amaranth, a native Florida necklace pod, Scarlett Milkweed, and Surinam cherry. Surinam cherry has just been listed on the invasive species list, but that is another post. I have tons of information I want to share about the Surinam Cherry.
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