Organizing Seeds and Planning the Garden

Hooray! It’s gardening season again!!

Wait. What? The snow is not even melting in Wisconsin. Have you lost your mind? I can almost hear you saying it, and when I first started gardening I would have thought the same thing. However, as my garden grew and I continued along my gardening journey, my garden season started earlier and earlier.

Starting the Garden Season

Over 20 years into my gardening journey, my gardening season now typically starts in December. While the snow is flying, and after the Christmas dinner has been devoured, I retreat to the sofa where I curl up with a hot cup of tea and my seed catalogs. As I flip through the pages, full of bright colorful vegetables and beautiful flowers in full bloom, I let my imagination run wild, dreaming of the bountiful oasis I’m going to create in my backyard. Inevitably, my imagination is much bigger than both my yard and my budget, so I always find myself having to scale back.

After I’ve marked all the seeds I’d like to buy for the new year, and sometimes before, I go through my existing seeds to check what I need to rebuy, what we didn’t like or didn’t grow well, and identify where I might have gaps to fill in my inventory. I also like to find one new item we can try in the vegetable garden each year. Occasionally, more than one new item sneaks its way in because I just can’t help myself.

My Favorite Seed Companies

Over the years I’ve purchased seeds from a number of different suppliers. More and more I find myself drawn to those suppliers that provide organic and heirloom seeds. Supporting growers of heirloom seeds is important to me. These seeds are often available through SeedSavers Exchange, Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Co., and others who are working to preserve genetic diversity in our food.

Organic, Hybrid, GMO…What Do They Mean?

What exactly is an heirloom seed, and what does it have to do with genetic diversity? Great question! In our modern food industry (and yes, this includes seed production!), there is a lot of science, and sometimes genetic modification, of the food we eat. Most of us have heard of GMO (genetically modified organisms) foods. Corn is one crop that is GMO. I was shocked when I learned at my local Farmer’s Market that all corn grown in Wisconsin is GMO! So what exactly is GMO? Basically GMO means that genetic material from one, often unrelated organism, is added to the genetic material of another organism. This is often done to make an organism (ex. corn) resistant to chemicals, such as Roundup, sprayed on the field. In some cases, genetic modification is also used to make apples that don’t brown. Despite GMO being used for years, the jury is still out on how much harm vs. good comes of this technique. One key to remember with GMO is that the genetic changes that are made are not ones that would normally occur in nature, nor be able to occur through cross breeding since it’s DNA from different organisms that is combined (think along the lines of bacteria or virus DNA being put into your tomato’s DNA). One way to avoid this is to grow your own corn from organic seed

Other seeds are designated as hybrid, or F1. These are seeds that have been bred to contain certain traits that are not “stable” in the next generation. The classic example taught in biology class is the one of Mendel’s peas. In this example Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics, took different colored peas and bred them to one another. This first generation of peas was the hybrid generation (they all carried the genes from both the yellow and the green peas, but all looked yellow). He then crossed two of the hybrid plants and got some hybrids (mixed trait plants) as well as some of each of the original parents. This principle holds true for today’s hybrid plants. If you try to save seed from them to grow in your garden next year, there are no guarantees that you will end up with what you want. And occasionally, the seed companies ensure that their hybrids do not produce viable seed. This means that even if you try to grow the seed you saved from this year’s plant, it won’t sprout. This ensures that the consumer has to buy new seed each year. In addition, both hybrid seeds and GMO seeds are often patented, meaning that you could get in trouble for saving and trying to regrow the seeds.

Finally there are open pollinated and heirloom seeds. All heirloom seeds are open pollinated, meaning that you can save and replant the seeds and always get the same plant. Which is what our ancestors did. An heirloom seed is one that has been grown for many generations (50-100 years), and often has a story behind it. They are also non-GMO. Open pollinated seeds are genetically stable varieties that produce viable seeds which can be saved and replanted the next year. These seeds will produce plants with the same traits as the one you planted the year before (with the exception of any mutations that occur, but this genetics lecture is already long enough…). Open pollinated and heirloom seeds are not patented, so you can safely save the seeds for next year’s garden.

What Do I Buy?

I personally like the idea of being able to save my own seed and being independent of the big seed companies. That said, I’m not a purest, and I do have some hybrid seeds in my collection. These are typically my storage onions and similar crops. I hope to phase these out over time as I use them up and find open pollinated alternatives with similar storage traits.

When I’m finished making my list and checking it twice, I go ahead and place my orders. Because of my desire to order primarily heirloom seeds, this means placing orders with more than one seed company to get the varieties I need. Then the long wait to receive the seeds starts. Mind you, anything longer than 24 hours is long when you’re waiting for that box of seeds to arrive!

Making a Plan…and Checking It Every Single Moment

In order to entertain myself during the long wait, I take the time to update my seed and planting list. I have high hopes of converting this to an electronic list at some point so I can retain some history, as well as save some time in having to recreate it each year. That said, I do find it satisfying to set pencil to paper, drawing out the table and filling it in. My table includes a column for the name of the plant and varieties I grow, as well as indoor sowing dates, sowing depth, and transplanting dates (or direct sowing dates). I also like to include spacing information so I have everything in one place for the season.

I also update my garden plan, which provides a visual of what I will be planting in each of my 12 primary beds. This is always a bit of a puzzle, and is becoming a bit more complicated as I continue to adjust the number of plants I grow now that the kids are out of the house. Do I really need 18 tomato plants for two people? Not really, but those little balls of sunshine are sooooo good! And they can be canned. And, and, and… It’s a true dilemma! Then there’s the question of where to put the new vegetables, and new varieties that we’re trying while keeping in mind spacing needs and companion planting benefits, and finally crop rotation.

That All Sounds Complicated…

I didn’t worry about all of this when I started gardening, and neither should you. This is something I grew into over the past 20 years as I’ve gained knowledge and experience. The most important part of gardening is just getting started. Then in the coming years as you learn more you can adopt the different garden techniques that speak to you and your space.

This year I have to find space for my new vegetables – corn and celery. This will mean I may have to cut into some of the tomato space, unless by moving my squash bed out of the primary beds I can free up enough space. We have an area between two trees that is open to the neighbors, and gets quite a bit of water when it rains. We’ve been discussing how to screen this area of fence to create some privacy and a wind block, and I think I have a solution. I also need to relocate a couple of rhubarb plants to make room for a temporary greenhouse in my herb garden area.

My plan this year is to take over part of the unplanted flower bed area surrounding our pool, and use it for my vegetables. It’s a rather large space so I have lots of room to play. I want to relocate the rhubarb to this area, then plant a block of corn as a windbreak along the fence. Finally, to help suppress weeds and drink up some of the excess water from when it rains, I want to plant my winter squash plants in among the corn, possibly adding in a trellis to provide additional space for the vines. This will allow me to add in a new crop (corn), keep my squash crop, and free up an entire bed in the main garden for my other new varieties as well as additional onions. Wish me luck!

Keeping Organized

With the new seeds I’ve been collecting, I needed a new storage box, and to get better organized. Finding a seed storage box is not easy! After looking around the internet, I settled on a photo organization system. It consists of a large outer box with a handle and a lid which snaps closed, and several smaller boxes inside to organize the photos. I ended up buying two in order to house all my seeds, and still have room for growth. I’m not sure I’m convinced that this is the best system for me, but we’ll see how things go. As luck would have it, shortly after I bought mine on Amazon, a YouTuber I follow bought almost identical boxes from Michaels at half the price! Sigh…

I also bought some seed saving envelopes when I placed one of my seed orders. One of my goals this year is to start saving my seeds. Wait! All that discussion up above about heirloom seeds, and you haven’t been saving them? I know, I know…but better late than never, right? This is the year that I decided to bite the bullet, and start saving them, so between now and harvest season I’ll be working to acquire all the things I’ll need to save seeds successfully…starting with reading some books. So far it does not appear I’ll need much equipment aside from a place to clean and dry them, and a system for storing and labeling them. This is great, because I hope that any savings I realize in the coming years from saving my seeds, I can reinvest into my garden in other ways.