Seed Starting Organization
- Jacki B.
- 4 days ago
- 4 min read
Hello Gardening Friends! I thought I would interrupt our normally scheduled blog posting about veggie plants that will grow here in SE Wyoming with something a bit timelier, at least for me, and I imagine for many of you!
For years, I grew plants for my family and labeled my seed planters/flats with painters’ tape, noting the plant name and the planting date. We moved here so I could start a nursery and growing business and my old way did not work. With 19 flats, I have found it necessary to become a bit more organized. I got to thinking about this as I wrote the last blog post and thought it would be interesting to share some of the organization ideas (good and bad) that I have explored in the last year preparing for this planting season.
To start out with, I have to admit while I am organized in general, I found it daunting to start a spreadsheet and keep track of my plants that way. I did start one, as evidence in the picture below:
I’m not saying it’s intimidating, well, actually, that is exactly what I am saying! And yes, I am growing almost all of what you see. So, while I borrowed one from another website adn adjusted it for my use and was ready to use it, I thought I would see what was out there on the interwebs for garden organization.
I initially found a lot on sorting seeds, which is helpful. Seed sorting is important because who really needs to buy more seeds than necessary? (Imagine my hand waving high in the air!!!!!) Last year, I started a binder but found this quasi-ammo can at Walmart and couldn't resist.
After being frustrated with not being able to find seed packets because some were very small, I went back to my binder.
I found this website with a lovely idea using plastic organization boxes to keep seeds organized.
To be fair, I had already seen this method in real life. Allisa, the Horticulturist at the El Paso County, CO, CSU Extension Office uses these for storing native plant seeds. But I was really looking for recordkeeping more than storage. So, I started looking for databases.
I started with key words “seed starting databases” which brought up a wealth of information about the seeds themselves, including Seeds and Plants - National Agricultural Library – USDA. This was not, however, what I had in mind.
I changed my criteria to “seed starting recordkeeping” and things got a little narrower. I found The Freshman Gardener website had free downloadable pages with places to put the data from the seed card.
These were lovely, but I needed to be able to correlate how and when things grew. Utah State University has a great article on organizing and recordkeeping, but still, not what I was looking for. Dr. Earth has a great article about what records to keep, but still not what I was looking for.
At this point, I changed my key words again, getting bigger, thinking maybe I am looking too small. So, I googled “farm recordkeeping” and lo and behold, there is what I was looking for! Databases that I could compile data and have searchable results for reports and growth comparisons. Well, as it turned out, I went too big. All these programs were meant for big farms. The smallest I could come up with was for a hobby farm operation that had only animals. Most of them focused on the financial side of bookkeeping, so they didn’t help much for my quest. There were a few websites from universities that had some how-to articles, including Cornell, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the University of Georgia.
Alas, I settled on the best thing I already knew, a spiral, graph 4x4 quad notebook. I am working with a friend to set up something that can track the growing process, that creates reports and shows all the data I collect. This is a work in progress, but we shall see how it goes.
My final analysis is this: do what makes you comfortable. There is no right answer. Here are some ideas that I picked up along the way that I think might work for gardeners who just want to remember what that plant in the corner is called:
1. Keep a garden journal. You can buy them or create them yourself by using free downloads from a load of different sites. I saw this one in Tractor Supply recently that I thought was cute. (And no, I have no affiliation with Tractor Supply accept I find neat things to spend on money on there!!!)
2. Use an excel spreadsheet. I found dozens of different templates from very basic to very involved. I think I downloaded this one because it was almost what I thought I wanted and modified it to what your saw before.
3. Use a plain (or graph) notebook. Here is the one I am working with right now. I put the placement of each plant, when it germinated, where I got the seed, when it was planted, the name (this should be obvious, but I had to go back and do it to several pages…) and any other information I want to record.
4. Put the name of the plant on blue or green painters’ tape on each row with the name of the plant and then when you transplant them, use a craft stick with the name so you know what is growing.
I hope this helps you if you are traveling this same journey. I will keep exploring ways to track, organize, and generally be more efficient with my plants and will keep you posted.
If you are still reading this, comment on what methods you use, and I will post them here!
Until then, happy gardening!
