My new seed organizer

I keep a lot of vegetable and flower seeds each year. I get so many free gift seed packets with my annual seed orders, and I have so many seeds left over each year after planting, that I have many packets, unopened or partially used. I have seeds for 5 different melon varieties, many different beans, 4 or 5 carrots, oodles of flowers, and so on. And I always end up saving seed from some of my garden flowers.


For many years, I kept my seed packets in a metal box, the tins like cookies or popcorn come in for the Christmas holidays. They were just in a jumble inside it. It kept out bugs and sunlight. When I moved to this house, I took over my husband's seeds as well as my own. He had them in a cardboard box.with cardboard dividers. I made more dividers, and took over the box. I keep it in the livingroom under the TV stand. I may have upgraded to a larger box at some point. But once I started saving seed in quantity, I ran out of room quickly.

So day before yesterday, we went to Kmart and we found a great plastic container by Akro-Mils, made for scrapbook organizing. It has a large compartment, divided into two columns, and it has room for 8 row dividers. It only comes with 4 plastic dividers, so I made more out of cardboard. It works swell! I labelled each divider. It also has a double lid, with storage space for my seed reciepts and miscellaneous stuff. It is not airtight, so when I go to store it for the summer in the fridge I'm going to encase it in a plastic bag tied shut, or another plastic tupperware or rubbermaid airtight storage unit.

It has enough compartments that I have room for each category of seeds. Cole crops and herbs are one unit, tomatoes have their own space, peas, beans, and corn form another. All pumpkins and squash have a unit. But when I go to store my home-saved seeds for all the beans next Fall, I will need another container for all those bulky seeds. I still don't have a container for my blue corn. It is just in a gallon ziplock, still on the cobs. I want to be able to pick a few kernals off each cob when filling orders, so they get a genetic diversity to avoid inbreeding.

We have had gorgeous weather here, some rainy days, but yesterday was in the 60's, sunny, and calm. We had the sunroof open for our country drive, and you couldn't ask for it to be nicer this time of year. The tulips and marcissus are all coming up, although the backyard ones are already blooming. I have to prune the grapes and apples soon. This week we are ordering the Mantis Electric tiller. I will report here how well it works. It comes with a great guarantee, so I can return it if it's junk. But one expert gardening local here has one and can't say enough good things about it. So I hope he's right!

Seeds for 2005 Arriving

Well, I'm getting all stoked about gardening this year. I ordered all my seeds early, the catalogues came earlier than in prior years, and now I wait for the mail every day to see if more goodies have arrived. My Burpee seeds came, and they are my favorite to order and grow. I also am buying seeds for Aunt Wanda's garden, and we'll see how my choices grow for her.

I am traveling right now, but when I get home I have to prune the apple trees. January is our coldest month, usually. I also have to prune the grapes. Finally. They have gone wild, with vines over 15 feet long. They are climbing in the trees and shrubs of my neighbor's yard now. But so are my ground cover roses. Dorothy Perkins, pink vigorous grower. Long canes.

We have gotten a lot of rain, with weather fronts just hammering California. The north got less than southern CA, though. Still, the rain makes my narcissus grow nicely. When I moved into this house I brought with me 3 paper grocery bags full of "Cheerfulness" narcissus with me, and I planted them in front and back yards. Last year I bought 100 crocus, and 300 more narcissus and 100 dwarf daffodils. This last Fall I bought 480 hybridized mix narcissus, 400 crocus, and 480 other daffodils. And 100 dwarf narcissus. I had Loren plant many of them for me. The rain made it easier to dig trenches in the hard clay soil for the bulbs. Now they are peeking out of the dirt, leaves, and since the bulbs were nice and fat, I'm sure they will be full of blooms. But the stupid bulb companies won't leave me alone now, and I have nowhere else to plant left. I don't do summer bulbs.

I bought a real nice software program to catalogue my seeds, and planting dates and I can print out different reports, even making totally custom reports. It's called "The Seed Program", simply enough, and it's made by Cyberniche Software. When I get home I will post a direct link to their web site, but if you so a search for them you will find it. I highly recommend them. It was only $25 plus a modest shipping fee, first class mail, the program is on a CD. My order was processed within 24 hrs, and it was shipped that same day. If the Interstate 80 wasn't closed over Donner Summit for a couple of days due to snow, the mail would have arrrived sooner. Still, it was only 8 days mailing.

Well, when I get home I will post a listing of what I'm planting in 2005. Ta-Ta for now.

Winter nights

Today was foggy mostly, with the sun coming through about 1 pm. Then it was beautiful. It only got up to 39 degrees today.

Snowy Weather

Today we drove down to Napa. It was raining here, but it was cold. When we got to the highway, we could see snow down to about 2,000 feet in the hills to the west ahead. The mountain was in clouds. Going "over the hill" we were in snow, and the roads were sanded. CalTrans had 2 plows at the top of the hill, just hanging out. Down below, in the Napa Valley, it was cold but not raining. The grape vineyards are all dormant now, no leaves on the vines. I saw some puddled water in the vineyards in places. We are saturated. We had lunch at the Rutherford grill, a place we like a lot. I had great sashimi ahi tuna with salad. It was delicious and light. Stan had fresh trout and tortilla soup, which they do pretty good.

I have to prune the fruit trees later this month, when it is really cold for here. When they start pruning the pear trees around here, I know it is time to prune the apples and grapes.

Rainy Weather

Today has been chilly, just around 44 degrees F, and it began raining again this afternoon. It has been raining for the last week, and will continue through next week and weekend, with a couple short breaks here and there. I want to try planting some beet seeds to see if they germinate and grow this late into winter. I think I can also plant them in early spring. I have to look up their prefered soil temp. I have ordered some new garden software that I am looking forward to, to help organize my gardening.