Make a seed bank. An awesome awesome seed bank.

I know that we're not the only ones with seed organizing skeletons in our closet.

Like, someone calling us seed hoarders might not be 100% off the mark. What with the half used packets of seeds peaking out of shoeboxes and potting bench drawers and such with incoherent scribbles attempting to convey planting dates or planting conditions or...well we don't really know what.

I think you know what we're talking about here.

But we're on the straight and narrow these days and it has made seed starting and saving SO much easier. And faster. And less fraught with self-reflection and wasted money. I mean, how many times have you bought more seeds just to realize later that WHOOPS! Already had those. when you were rifling through a drawer in your potting shed?

Yeah. Us too.

Then we got organized. And you can, too.

Here's how:

Gather your materials

• Rectangular plastic box with sealing lid (we like this one with dividers, but use anything that you already have or that you like)
• Small plastic zipper bags that will fit inside your box when filled
• Colored paper about the same size as your bags
• Blank address labels that will fit on your bags
• Something to write with
• Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalll of your seed packets 

Make your seed bank
Firstly, take your shoeboxes and drawers and flower pots and back pockets and empty them of all of your seed packets.

1. Sort your packets
Trash:

• Empty packets
  Don't get all sentimental over the pretty photos or hieroglyphics you've drawn on there. Toss! Cleanse!
• Expired packets 
  Take a look at this chart for seed viability dates and toss any seeds you have that are expired. Especially if the seeds have been stored in...ahem...less than ideal conditions. (A hot garage is no place to store seeds if you want to extend their shelf life. We learned this the hard way.)
• Unknown seeds 
  Anything rolling around in dust at the bottom of your shoebox gets tossed. Be strong - it needs to happen.

Save:

• Any packet that is younger than its expiration date with at least a few seeds left
  

2. Label your new seed packets
Next, sit down with your now vetted seed collection and fill out a label for each packet of seeds with the plant type (Pepper, Hot), variety (Padron), Year (2013), Lot # (if available) and source (Johnny's).

Then apply the labels to bags, orienting the labels the same way on each bag so that they'll be easy to read when being rifled through.

3. Fill your new packets
Go back to your pile of dirty and worn seed packets and empty the seeds from each packet into its corresponding labeled bag. Zip them closed, pressing the air out of the bag as you go.

Now create your alphabetized dividers using different colored paper for vegetables, flowers, herbs and cover crops. You can use different categories, too, this is just how we've sorted things out and we like it, so maybe you will too. We can't be sure. We're not you.

For each of your categories, create alphabetized dividers for each so that you have, for example, a green vegetable divider with an A on it and one with a B on it and so on.

4. Fill up your seed bank
Sort your bagged seeds into their alphabetized and categorized spot, pop the lid on and, if you're a spreadsheet dork like we are, make for the computer.

4+. Dork out
The final step here, if you really want to keep a handle on your seeds, is to keep a running inventory of your stock so that when you sit down to order seeds next season you don't have to manually rifle through your now organized seed storage to know what you have and don't have.

We use a Google Spreadsheet to keep track of our seed inventory and update it as we add and use seeds from our stash. Feel free to make a copy of the template and use it for your garden.

When that's all done, pop your boxed seeds into the freezer or just tuck into a cool, dark place until next season.

And, of course, breathe a big fat sigh of satisfaction at the super organized seed collection you have.

Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhh...that's better.