Hello, this is Marjory Wildcraft
and today I’m going to talk to you a little bit about organizing your seeds.
And, of course, as you get into growing your own groceries,
you're going to be collecting a lot of seeds,
you'll be saving seeds, trading seeds with friends,
and you want to come up with a way to organize all that,
or in my case, disorganize all that.
If you remember from our previous interviews
the three key tips to saving your seeds is,
one, you want to keep them cool …
you want to keep them dark,
and you want to keep them dry.
Now, let’s talk about the containers that will help you do that.
I’ve tried a lot of different things,
everything from the Mason jar to the coffee can,
and you're going to laugh at
what I finally came up with as the best solution
- it’s ammunition boxes.
These are commercially available.
These are plastic; I got them from a local sporting goods store.
You can also pick up from military surplus these old ammo cans.
This particular one is a 30 caliber can.
The great thing about these things:
they're waterproof, they're solid, they're stackable.
They will last you all of your life and,
if taken care of properly,
you'll be able to give them to your children;
your children will be able to give them to your grandchildren.
It’s truly what seed saving is all about.
So these are ammunition boxes, currently running at $10 to $15 a piece,
depending on where you pick them up.
I like the plastic ones.
They're a little bit lighter, but either way you want to go.
I generally tend to store my seeds …
I have a preference to store them in paper,
so envelopes and paper bags is generally how I store them.
On occasion,
if all I have is a Ziploc bag or something like that,
I’ll do that Ziploc bag and put a piece of tissue paper
or a wipe or some dry cloth in there
to help absorb the moisture.
Also, in addition to whatever bags I might have them in,
I want to put a desiccant into the container that I’m storing in.
Some people collect those little packets
that you get with your vitamins or your medicine,
those little packets of desiccant.
Some people collect those and save those and use that; that’s fine.
I don’t actually use medicines or vitamins very much,
so I don’t have much of those.
What I use is cat litter.
I’ll take a sock and a couple of cups of this cat litter,
tie the sock off, and there you go.
I take one of these and toss it into my seed kit,
and that just is an extra protection to make sure
that I’m keeping moisture out of there
and those seeds are good and dry.
For both your desiccants and your cat litter,
if they do get a little moist over time –
doing their job, absorbing water –
you can take them out, put them on a cookie sheet,
put them in a low temperature oven,
and let that moisture evaporate back out,
or over an open fire with a low flame
if you're doing this in a primitive situation,
and go ahead and reuse it over and over again.
And the desiccants can be reused over and over again,
just as the boxes can.
Talking about how I categorize my seeds,
I generally put them in about four different categories.
I categorize them by plants that are warm season plants,
so these are my vegetables like the squashes and cucumbers, tomatoes,
things that are generally going to be growing in the spring and the summer –
okra, corn, those type of things.
I also then have another category, another box,
full of my cool season plants,
and these are going to be your lettuce, your broccoli, spinach, kale,
the things that are going to be able to withstand a freeze
and generally you're growing in the winter or fall seasons.
And for those two, by the way,
which is what most people are starting out with,
you're really only going to need one box
or maybe two boxes as the most to just help you sort it out.
I tend to love collecting and swapping and sharing with people,
so I’ve probably got four or five boxes
just for those two categories.
Where you're going to start using a lot more volume
is when you're starting to save
for cover crops and for calorie crops.
Cover crops would be your oats,
or your rye, or your vetch, or your clover.
And as you can see, they start taking up some room,
so I like to save them in a cloth bag
or maybe a big grocery bag that I’ve saved.
I’ve got vetch that I’ve saved for years and years,
and oats that I’ve saved and planted and saved.
And that’s where you start ending up
using a lot more volume;
you end up starting to use a lot more
of these containers for that.
Also calorie crops tend to take up more room
– for example, corn.
This is this red corn that I really love to grow;
this is only part of it.
Here’s some blue corn.
You're going to need a lot more space
because generally you're growing a larger area for those
and you just physically need more seeds.
Also, when I’m talking about seed saving,
when I’m saving seeds,
I usually like to save at least two to three times,
sometimes four or five times
what I’m going to need for my own needs
partly because I’m going to be giving away and sharing,
but partly just because I want some redundancy.
Some years it’s just hard to get a crop going
or you may lose something,
and so you want to have that seed as a little seed bank.
If you remember that most vegetable seeds are going to stay viable,
if you take real good care of them,
for about four or five years,
a little bit of time.
There are some of them that obviously last a lot longer,
and then some are a lot shorter.
That five year guideline is just a rule of thumb.
So anyway, it’s a lot of fun.
I buy seeds from a lot of different places;
a lot of people have been asking me.
Just look online at Sustainable Seed Company,
Bountiful Gardens,
Seed Savers Exchange,
Johnny’s Selected Seeds –
there’s a lot of really good, reputable seed dealers out there.
And I hope this has helped you organize your own seeds;
there’s a lot of different methods.
This is Marjory Wildcraft
and I’ll see you on another segment.