Preparing for seed starting season well ahead of time and becoming better organized will save you headaches and money in the months to come. This week, I’m sharing how I prepare and the new efficient seed organization system that I have adopted.
I have made changes this year to my seed organization that have been a game-changer. I’ve become better organized all while spending less money and gaining a ton of peace of mind. The organization system is inspired by Amazon warehouses and how they track and manage their inventory. I learned about this through my neighbor Zen, a great gardener who has an awesome Instagram account, @EncyGROWpedia.
Having seed starting equipment ready to go ahead of sowing time is a big stress reducer.
I start out this week with all the ways you can get prepared for seed starting season and conclude by delving into the seed organization system that Zen turned me onto, and the benefits it offers.
Are You a Planner or a Planter?
You may be able to identify immediately as one or the other, or perhaps you are a hybrid. I think of myself as more of a planter than a planner, but I have gotten a lot better at being a planner first, which is important if you want to be organized coming into seed starting season to reduce your stress load.
The approaching seed starting season is like a freight train. You see it down the track, far away, and it doesn’t look like it is moving all that fast if it’s moving at all. But as it approaches, you better get out of the way. It has a ton of momentum, and it’s not stopping for you.
Sometimes, figuring out what you need to do is the first step. Or maybe you have been at this for a while, like me, and you know exactly what you need to do to prepare. The challenge is making the time to do it before the horses are out of the gate.
Take Stock
There is no better time than January to take advantage of the calm before the storm. Because we aren’t busy taking care of an active garden, we have the opportunity to take stock of everything, in both the literal and figurative senses.
Seed Starting Mix
The first thing you’ll need is your seed starting mix, a variety of soilless mix that is formulated for germinating seeds. Don’t assume that you’ll be able to get the seed starting mix you want a couple of months from now when you are ready to get started. The brand you trust may be out of stock or backordered.
I just ordered all the soilless mix I’ll need in 2025 because I don’t want to be in a position where I run out in the middle of sowing seeds or potting up. This has happened to me before, and when I went to order more, the price was marked up by three times what I was used to paying.
If you practice soil blocking, you may make your own seed starting medium that requires quite a few ingredients that you won’t always be able to find at the drop of a hat, like greensand and powdered line.
If you have a favorite seed starting mix, don’t hesitate to stock up. It may not be available when you are ready to start sowing.
Pots and Trays
Seed trays, bottom trays, cell trays, humidity trays and pots — do you have enough of what you will need to start seeds and eventually pot up the seedlings? Order these now.
Standard seed trays are 10 inches by 20 inches, with numerous options of cells per tray.
Warming and Lighting Sources
Germinating mats, also known as heat mats, raise the soil temperature just enough to stimulate seeds to germinate. And if you’re starting seeds in a greenhouse or a cold basement, you may also want heat sources to maintain a warm enough environment overnight.
I use both LED lights for seed starting and the T5 fluorescent shop lights that I have had for years. Fluorescent lights are not as efficient as LED lights, but both get the job done when you know how to use them properly.
Fluorescent light tubes are becoming harder to come by, so if you haven’t replaced the tubes in a couple of years, don’t wait to look for replacements to keep on hand.
A shop light is typically 48 inches wide and the diameter is called a T12, though newer, more efficient fluorescent bubs are smaller in diameter, called T8s and T5s. A T12 is about the diameter of a quarter, a T8 is about the diameter of a nickel and a T5 is about the diameter of a dime.
I keep my lights on a schedule of 16 hours on, 8 hours off, each day. I like to use a Bluetooth timer or Wi-Fi timer so I can make changes right from my phone and check that the lights are going on and off as scheduled. You can also use a mechanical programmable timer to control your light.
The key thing is having some kind of timer, no matter what version fits your lifestyle.
A Space for Seed Starting
Do you have an idea already of where your seed starting setup will be located? If there furniture to be rearranged? Are the lights set up yet? You can get a jump on seed starting season by making these decisions now and setting up as much as you can ahead of time.
The seed starting room is ready to go!
Photo Credit: Joe Lamp’l
Determine What You Will Grow This Year
Will this be a year when you stick with what you know or a year to dream a little bit? Maybe you’ll grow what you’ve always grown, or branch out, adding flowers on top of vegetables, or adding perennials and prairie plants to your repertoire.
Of course, being overly ambitious can also create challenges. In the excitement of the moment, it doesn’t take long to rack up a big bill with seed packets, seedlings and things that we probably never should have bought.
I’d like for you to be realistic about what you want to grow this year and what you can grow this year. Just because you can grow it doesn’t mean you have to grow it. The stress level comes down a lot when you pare back on the initial plan. I don’t want to discourage you from going for it, but at the same time that can add to the stress and the disease pressure and the pest pressure. Gardening is supposed to be fun and enjoyable and what you look forward to doing in your downtime.
Once you know what plant varieties you want to grow, also determine how much is enough. If you grow more food than your family can eat, you will have extra produce to share with friends or donate, which is a good thing but it can also make your garden considerably more difficult to stay on top of.
Emotionally, you don’t want to waste the fruits of your labor. You know that what you’ve grown is full of nutrition and value, and people need that. Plan now for where your excess produce will go so that it doesn’t get wasted.
I’m guilty of impulse buying seeds and then never planting them. Then when the next year comes around and it’s time to peruse seed catalogs, I forget about the seeds I already own. I encourage you to start subtracting from the seeds you already have before adding any more to your collection.
The only way that you can do that is to know what you currently have so that you don’t end up buying more of the same thing. Your accumulated seeds have a limited window of viability, so ask yourself which seeds are still viable. You can test seeds for viability by taking 10 out of a packet, putting them in a damp paper towel in a zip-lock bag for a few days and seeing if they sprout. If 8 of the 10 seeds sprout, that seed packet has an 80% germination rate. But that rate will diminish with each passing year under none of the seeds are any good.
You can create a spreadsheet (or get somebody in your family or friend to create a spreadsheet for you) listing all of your seed packets. This is only a big task in the first year. In subsequent years, it’s just a matter of maintaining the existing list and adding to it.
You can use your spreadsheet to take notes such as what varieties you’ve enjoyed growing and eating, who gave you those seeds or where you bought them. These notes will inform whether you seek to continue growing a certain variety and where you can find more seed when your supply runs low.
Sow the varieties that you truly enjoy growing and eating, and don’t go overboard by planting far more than you can possibly eat and share.
A Seed Organization Game Changer
As I mentioned up top, Zen, my neighbor with the great Instagram account @EncyGROWpedia, offers great seed organization tips. He turned me onto the inventory management system that I have adopted for my seeds.
I was the guy who just put all his seed packets in a paper bag. I didn’t know what seeds I had on hand until I turned the bag over and dumped the packets out. This wouldn’t be daunting if I only had a dozen or so packets, but I have hundreds. It’s quite stressful right from the start, and you don’t want to go there, I promise.
I later graduated to photo storage cases. These are like clear briefcases, with smaller cases within. One case typically contained 16 smaller cases, and they were the perfect size to put seed packets into. I used one variety per smaller case, but I grow many, many varieties, so you’re talking about lots of briefcases, costing between $15 and $30 each.
Photo storage cases are ideal for seed organization if you don’t have many varieties.
Zen turned me onto a system he learned of by touring an Amazon facility.
Have you ever wondered how Amazon keeps up with all the different things that they have and how they can get an item to you within hours of when you ordered it? When a new item comes in for sale, they just place it in whatever available space they have, rather than specific sections organized by product type. When they put a product in a designated bin, they scan a barcode on that bin. Then when they need to retrieve the item to ship it to a buyer, they can readily look up exactly what bin the item is in and where to find that bin in the warehouse.
So when an order comes in, the associate knows the product is over there in, for example, rack 600, shelf 4, bay 2.
If a new version of that item comes in, it probably doesn’t end up right next to the previous version. It goes in the next available space, which could be across the warehouse. But because there’s a specific code attached to that new item, the workers always know exactly where it is.
Rather than organizing alphabetically or by plant type, I realized that I could just pick up a seed packet at random, add it to my spreadsheet, assign it a number, and store it in a location labeled with that same number.
So my storage box may have a Chereke purple tomato seed packet behind a flower seed packet, but it doesn’t matter — my spreadsheet corresponds with the location to easily find what I need.
Instead of clear plastic cases, I am now using ammunition boxes. You can find them at outdoor stores, Walmart or Costco.
I can put easily a hundred seed packets into one box. I started with a four-pack of boxes, and I labeled them 01, 02, 03 and 04. Then I made separator cards out of cut up manilla folders, with a numbered tab.
So if my spreadsheet say 03-012, I know to open box 03 and flip to the 12th separator.
The bottom tray securely holds four ammunition boxes for easy storage and transport.
It may sound a little chaotic, but it’s very organized, and if it’s good enough for Amazon, it’s definitely good enough for me.
Rather than having to move seed packets from spot to spot and case to case to maintain alphabetical order, I just add new seeds to whatever space I have available. It’s a tremendous time-saver.
The first two digits match the number of the box. The three digits after the hyphen are like page numbers in a book, for ease of finding specific seeds. When I want to find a variety of seed, I look up its assigned number and use that number to find what box it’s in and what separator card it is located behind.
Zen’s Seed Organization Tips
Zen has a background in IT, and he is used to dealing with large datasets and then having to reduce them to make decisions quickly. He excels at finding a way to organize data and then filter and manipulate the data.
When data is added to a database system, it is simply added on in the records and given a unique ID to retrieve that data later.
Think of an old card catalog at a library. When new books come in, new cards are added to the catalog, and existing cards have to be moved to other drawers to make room for them. But digital databases don’t require reorganizing all the data whenever new data is added.
Zen came to adopt the Amazon system through record keeping for his orchard.
“Once you start needing to keep track of data on each tree, then a plant label just isn’t going to work,” Zen says. “So having an ID allows you to then store everything in a spreadsheet, and then on a spreadsheet you can always add on new columns when there’s more data that you’re interested in keeping track of.”
On a tree tag he still included basic information that is good to have at hand, such as the date the tree was planted, the tree type and the variety. In his spreadsheet, he also records what vendor or what nursery the tree came from, what rootstock was used, and if a tree needed to be removed because it died. He also tracks the seasonality of each tree, like when it buds, when the buds swell and when the buds are ready to break open.
Whenever he adds a new seed packet to his seed collection, he gives it the next number in an ongoing sequence. He has a column for type, like cabbage, and group, like Chinese cabbage versus regular cabbage, and for the specific variety. Then when he wants to know what cabbage varieties he has available, he can quickly find that data.
He also uses columns to distinguish between vine-type squash and bush-type squash. He doesn’t mix those columns with anything else, so that when he goes to find bush-type squash or vine-type squash, the data is clean.
He also has a column for “status,” as in active or inactive. Inactive means he doesn’t have any of that seed left. He can filter the data to show him, for example, only the active broccoli seeds.
He also tracks expiration, seed sources, color, direct sown seed, sowing depth, seed density, germination, minimum germination temperature, indoor started seed, seed starting tray size, item number on the vendor’s website, and the link to the product page on the vendor’s website.
Zen’s seed storage spreadsheet has numerous columns to save important information and made it easy to find seeds that meet certain criteria. (Photo Credit: Zen @EncyGROWpedia) View a larger image of this spreadsheet here.
I hope you enjoyed these seed starting preparation and seed organization tips. If you haven’t listened yet, you can do so by scrolling to the top of the page and clicking the Play icon in the green bar under the page title.
What is your seed organization system? Let us know about your experience in the comments below.
Links & Resources
Some product links in this guide are affiliate links. See full disclosure below.
Episode 083: Gardening Indoors: The Science of Light, with Leslie Halleck
Episode 297: Seed Starting Essentials
Episode 187: The Informed Seed Shopper: What to Know Before You Buy
joegardener blog: The Best Soil Temperature for Seed Germination
joegardener Online Gardening Academy™: Popular courses on gardening fundamentals; managing pests, diseases & weeds; seed starting and more.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Organic Vegetable Gardening: My new premium online course. The course is designed to be a comprehensive guide to starting, growing, nurturing and harvesting your favorite vegetables, no matter what you love to eat, no matter where you live, no matter your level of gardening experience.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Master Seed Starting: Everything you need to know to start your own plants from seed — indoors and out.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Beginning Gardener Fundamentals: Essential principles to know to create a thriving garden.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Growing Epic Tomatoes: Learn how to grow epic tomatoes with Joe Lamp’l and Craig LeHoullier.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Master Pests, Diseases & Weeds: Learn the proactive steps to take to manage pests, diseases and weeds for a more successful garden with a lot less frustration. Just $47 for lifetime access!
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Perfect Soil Recipe Master Class: Learn how to create the perfect soil environment for thriving plants.
Zen on Instagram | @encygrowpedia
Territorial Seed Company – Our podcast episode sponsor and Brand Partner
Proven Winners ColorChoice – Our podcast episode sponsor and Brand Partner of joegardener.com
Milorganite® – Our podcast episode sponsor and Brand Partner of joegardener.com
Disclosure: Some product links in this guide are affiliate links, which means we get a commission if you purchase. However, none of the prices of these resources have been increased to compensate us, and compensation is not an influencing factor on their inclusion here. The selection of all items featured in this post and podcast was based solely on merit and in no way influenced by any affiliate or financial incentive, or contractual relationship. At the time of this writing, Joe Lamp’l has professional relationships with the following companies who may have products included in this post and podcast: Corona Tools, Milorganite, Soil3, Territorial Seed Company, Earth’s Ally, Proven Winners ColorChoice, Farmer’s Defense, Heirloom Roses and Dramm. These companies are either Brand Partners of joegardener.com and/or advertise on our website. However, we receive no additional compensation from the sales or promotion of their product through this guide. The inclusion of any products mentioned within this post is entirely independent and exclusive of any relationship.
