Sorting Through the Vegetable Seeds/Out With the Old in With the New

One of my annual rituals in the vegetable gardening process is to sort through what seeds I have and to decide what to keep, what to throw out, and what I will need to buy for this year's garden. So how do I go about this?

As I mentioned in a previous post, my general rule of thumb in deciding which seeds are still good is this:  I discard any seeds more than one calendar year old.  So for this year's garden I will keep any seeds dated 2013 or newer, and discard any older than that.  I have found this to work well for me even though you will find different ideas of seed expiration dates out there.  Some seeds can last well beyond a year, however I want to make sure that the seeds I'm planting are definitely viable.  After all, it is a lot of work to prepare and to plant and I try to minimize replanting if possible.

So where should you buy your seeds?  I use a combination of seeds catalogs and local stores.  For the most part I now find myself buying most of them locally since I find the prices better.  The catalogs are great if you want a particular variety you can't find locally, such as heirloom tomatoes.  It's fun just to browse through the seed catalogs for ideas and pointers.  They are really more than just a catalog since they contain lots information on how to plant and take care of the many different vegetables. Also, information on which varieties are best for your area of the country can be found.

A few photos of my seed "collection" for 2014 to give you an idea of what I have planned this year:

The last photo shows how I store my seeds.  It's important to store them properly.  As you can see, I store them in a plastic container with a lid and keep them in a cool dry place out of the sun.  Any partial packets I put inside a Ziploc bag and also inside the container.  This prevents the seeds in the opened packets from drying out.

This weekend was also another good birding weekend.  We had a visit from a male cardinal for the first time this winter along with many of our usual species:

Stay tuned.  In my next post I will go over in depth  which vegetables I will grow this year and which I plan on starting ahead indoors.  Also, there are some I start outside in the winter cold using a technique called winter sowing...and it really works!