Confessions of a seed hoarder

I must confess…I have a hoarding problem.  I hoard seeds.  What started innocently with buying some different varieties to grow (food should be fun, you know!!) move on to trading extra seeds for some additional different varieties.  Then the seed catalogs come in December.  I welcome their arrival like old friends.  We nestle under a blanket on the couch and spend hours going through all the colorful details.  Sometimes we even revisit those details several times over.

I could not help myself as I looked through the seed catalogs. Ohhhhh…look at the various colors and descriptions of flavor and different ripening times and (need I continue). Needless to say, I ordered more seeds and not just a few. I think that I have enough that I could share with half of my neighborhood and still be seed secure. 🙂

I have begun to dig through my stash and started pulling out and planting these precious gems for transplanting in late spring. I still have plenty more to start over the next few weeks. Those that I have planted I have been eagerly watching through the clear cover for signs of life. Germination has started and some have begun to arch their backs and wake up. (It sort of reminds me of when we humans first wake up, often arching and stretching our backs before straightening up and embarking on the new day.) I can’t help but to look at them several times a day and compare what is starting to sprout to the list of what I have planted. I know, I know, patience should be a virtue that I have in this instance and things won’t grow miraculously in a matter of hours, but I can’t seem to help myself! The excitement of the new life and the thoughts of getting to try all of the new flavors overwhelms logic right now!

Wile I have seed hoarding tendancies, I can happily say they are short lived. For me, the urge to buy more, new, colorful, tasty, (well you know) seeds is like an addiction, but so is the desire to get these wonderful packets of life into the soil and started growing. I will, over the course of the next month or so, when separating the seedlings and graduating them to their own pots, have the “what the heck was I thinking moment” but that soon will pass too. By May I will happily have a huge variety of plants to experiment with and, for those willing recipients who don’t mind my eclectic passion for variety, share with others. And, if I cannot find a home for all of those plants, they will not become orphans or get composted, I will just look around a little harder for another possible nook to plant it in. Sometimes those “independant” plants save me when catastrophe strikes the others planted elsewhere and sometimes they teach me lessons in just what is possible in less than optimal conditions.

Am I alone in this hoarding condition or are there others out there with it too? Let me know. Maybe we can start a support group. I suspect that the support group would lead to supporting the habit, through generating more excitement and possibly even trades for even more variety. 😉 Oh well, I guess there could be worse hoarding habits to have! Here’s to looking forward to spring and getting to really dig into gardening!