How To Read A Seed Packet

Reading a seed packet can be daunting if you are a new gardener but a wise thing to do!  Learn how to read a seed packet and what the information means and see how it can help you be a better gardener and help you make informed choices in the seeds you buy.

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Why You Should Read A Seed Packet

Seed packets are a wealth of information for the home gardener.  They can help you buy the right seeds for your climate, know how to care for your plant, if the plant is going to attract beneficial pollinators, how to grow the plant and even the history of the plant variety.

Reading a seed packet can give you an understanding on if the seed is a hybrid or an heirloom, whether it was organically grown and how to use the plant in the kitchen or how to create a garden style!  They even give you information on disease resistance, when to start growing, what the seedlings will look like and if the variety has won awards.

With all this information available on a seed packet, a good gardener will always read them and a new gardener should learn how to read a seed packet to avoid making costly mistakes like buying the wrong seeds or starting your seeds at the wrong time.

Key Information On A Seed Packet

You’ve been working hard planning your garden and now the seeds have arrived in the mail or you are about to head on to the nursery or the big box stores to buy your seeds.  It can be quite overwhelming the first time looking through all those seed packets.  It’s ok, you’ve got this!

Seed packet styles and information vary by company providing them.  Some of my local nursery’s only have the company name and address, a date packed and the vegetable on them.  Other seed suppliers have far more information written on the seed packet and it can be confusing looking at them all.

There’s some key information which is on most seed packets so let’s go through these with pictures and examples to help you see where this information might be across a few different seed suppliers.

Name

There’s a couple of names listed on a seed packet.  You will usually see

• Company or Supplier’s name
• Common name of the plant also known as the plant name
• Variety name

Company Name

Seed suppliers or companies will have their name on the front of the seed packet.  This may have an address or website near the name but not always.  This helps you know where you got your seeds from and if you like the plant, you can buy the same again another season.

Here are some examples of seed packets and the company name’s highlighted with a colored box.

Common Name / Plant Name

The common name on a seed packet is the name of the plant.  For example, this is the vegetable, fruit, herb or flower name like:

• Lavender
• Pepper
• Broccoli
• Foxglove
• Salvia
• Bean
• Mache
• Lettuce
• Hot Pepper
• Larkspur

Here are some examples of seed packets with the common name highlighted.

Variety Name

Seeds can be hundreds of different varieties for each type of plant.  The variety is the name of the plant cultivar you are growing for example:

• Hot Pepper Varieties: Anaheim Chili, Caribbean Red, Pasilla Bajio
• Broccoli Varieties: Purple Sprouting, Romanesco
• Zucchini Varieties: Black Beauty, Gold Rush
• Larkspur Varieties: Galilee Blue, Giant Imperial, Fancy Smoke Eyes
• Dill Varieties: Bouquet, Thalia, Hera, Elephant
• Tomato Varieties: Jersey Devil, Black Krim, Mortgage Lifter, Atomic
• Watermelon Varieties: Sugar Baby, Hopi Yellow, Chubbiness, Starlight, Orange Crisp, Blacktail Mountain

The variety name is important if you are looking for a specific plant to grow.  This might be for the taste or that the variety is cold hardy, disease-resistant or heat-tolerant or perhaps you have just heard and read about a certain variety which you would like to try.

Here are some examples of seed packets with the variety name highlighted.

Image

Most seed packets will show a photo or an illustration of the plant when mature or harvested to show you what the plant will look like when it is bigger.  This helps you to choose flowers based on the color and appearance, fruit or vegetables which look the most appetizing and any other reason you might select this variety to grow.  The photo below shows a selection of both photographs and illustrated images on seed packets.

Days to Maturity / Days to Bloom

Brilliant information for gardeners!  This tells you how many days it takes until the plant is ready to harvest or if the plant is a flower, the number of days until the plant blooms.  You can add these numbers to a seed starting schedule spreadsheet to help you plan your garden harvests to grow as much as you can in your backyard.

The days to maturity number is an important one to know, long season summer veggies like eggplant, tomatillos, peppers, and tomatoes may not produce a crop to harvest until the first frosts arrive in your area.  This is particularly important for northern climates or high altitudes where the seasons are shorter.  If you live in a short season area you should choose seeds for plants that will mature within your growing season.  You can learn more about seeds in the Ultimate Guide to Choosing the Right Seeds to Grow in Your Garden and you can find out how long your growing season is here at the Old Farmer’s Almanac.

This number is also super useful if you are a new gardener or if you are growing a new variety or plant and you are unsure if the plant is ripe.  By counting the days to maturity from the date of seed planting can help you determine if crops like watermelon, winter squash or if those fancy green tomatoes are ready to pick of not.

Botanical Name

The botanical name is the Latin name of the plant you are growing.  This isn’t always listed on seed packets for vegetables and fruit but is commonly listed on herb and flower seed packets.  See the examples in the photos below showing Foxglove botanical name Digitalis purpurea and English Lavender botanical name  Lavandula angustifolia as well as the Mache (Corn Salad) seed packet showing the botanical name Valerianella locusta. 

The first name is the genus and the second name is the species. The average home gardener may not be interested in this (unless you are a secret botany nerd like me)  but this can be useful if you are saving seeds for your own personal or family seed bank and are concerned with cross-pollination for similar species of the same genus.  For example, a blue Hubbard squash is Curcubita maxima and a butternut squash is Curcubita moschata.  These are two different types of winter squash and they will cross-pollinate as they are part of the same genus or plant family.

Spacing

The spacing is how far apart you should sow the seeds or plant the transplants in the garden for the best results.  Beans might say on the packet to sow every 6 inches or something like broccoli might need 14-18 inches space when big enough to transplant into their final growing space.

Some seed packets will show pictures to show the spacing and others will just indicate the numbers.

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What does thin to mean on seed packets?

This means that you should give plants enough space to grow by removing weaker looking seedlings.  Thinning (thin out) is removing seedlings that are too close together to create more space.  This can be done by pulling out the seedling or snipping the seedling with scissors level with the soil.  Some seed packets will include instructions on the spacing needed for thinning like the example below:

Planting Instructions

This tells you how to sow and care for the plant.  The instructions usually tell you when to start the plant e.g. indoors 8 – 10 weeks before the last frost date of spring or if you need to direct sow the seeds outdoors after the last frost.  These will also include how deep the seeds need to be sown and how quickly the seeds will spout or germinate into seedlings.

Plant Habit

Information about the plant is printed on the seed packet.  The packet may use keywords like bush, container, climbing, trailing or compact to describe how the plant will grow.  Small varieties suitable for growing in containers might include phrases like container variety, compact and bush forming.  If you have limited space, container growing or smaller varieties will help you pack more plants to grow in the space you have.

The seed packet might include information about the height and spread of the plant and give sizing like Height: 36-48 in. or Mature Height: 1 – 2 1/2 ft.  The spread is how wide the plant will grow and is more likely to be included on perennial shrubs and plants which some back year after year.

For tomatoes, you might see determinate or indeterminate printed on the packet.  Determinate varieties produce fruit all at the same time whilst indeterminate varieties will keep growing and producing fruit which ripen over the season and are killed by the frost in fall.

Quantity / Weight

The seed envelope with  have a weight or a number of seeds printed on it.  Small seeds like lettuce or carrots may have a weight whilst larger seeds like beans and peas might list a number of seeds in the packet.  This information is important if you are trying to plan how much to plant to grow food for you, your family or community.  Just like buying in bulk for food or toilet paper is often cheaper, buying seeds in larger quantities is also cheaper and might be worth considering if you plan on growing a large garden or allotment.

Type of Seed

The type of seed refers to if the seed is open pollinated, non-GMO, heirloom or hybrid. This is important to know if you plan to save seed or if you have problems with certain diseases in the garden.  Check out the Ultimate Guide to Choosing the Right Seeds to Grow in Your Garden to find out more about each type of seed available to the home grower.  

On a seed packet, the type of seed is usually clearly shown, take a look at the examples below.

Accreditation and Awards

Badges and images on the seed packet are used to show if the variety has won any awards such as the AAS (All American Selection) or if the seed was grown to certain standards like the USDA organic.  These are useful to know if you are looking for plants which are organic if you are trying to grow all organic or if you are looking for reliable varieties to grow then choosing AAS awarded varieties would be a good choice if you are a new gardener.

Plant Description

Plant descriptions are really useful nuggets of information for gardeners!  They might tell you about the history of the plant or give detailed information about the plant and how it looks.  The description might also tell you if the plant is beneficial to insects if the plant is hardy to frost and if the plant is an annual (you need to sow seed every year as the plant dies) or a perennial (comes back every year).  Some plants are biennial which means they flower in the second year, carrots, angelica, and hollyhocks are examples of biennial plants.

Sometimes, plant descriptions include notes on how to eat or prepare the plant, if there is any resistance to disease or if there is anything gardeners need to know about such as the plant is poisonous if eaten.

Cultivation Notes

This might be listed as growing information or notes.  It is information about the soil type, how much light (full sun, part shade, etc) and notes about how to grow your plant will be included.  Leeks, for example, have information on them to tell you how to blanch the bottoms, parsnips include when best to harvest your plant for the best flavor.  Information about this varies depending on the seed supplier and the type of plant.

The information might also include what the soil temperature should ideally be when sowing the seeds outside, how to care for the plant after it is established such as pruning or the need for providing trellis.

When To Plant

Often seed packets use images of the country to show when to start the seeds and when to plant outdoors depending on the USDA hardiness zone.  Follow the instructions on the packet for the best chance your new plants have at growing in your garden.

Date

The date planted on a seed packet is important.  It tells you how old the seed is and you can use that date to see if your seed is still viable or good to grow.  Seeds like parsnips need to be fresh every year to grow, other seeds can be stored for years and still grow.  This information is important to gardeners looking to buy seed for more than one growing season or if you are wanting to try seed saving.

Wrapping It All Up

There is a lot to be found on a seed packet and it is key to gardening success!  Planting dates/times enable you to get the best from your plants and avoid losing them to frost or the wrong transplanting dates.  The days to maturity will greatly help gardeners in short-season areas select varieties which will be ready to harvest before the frosts arrive and looking for AAS awarded varieties helps new growers choose plants which are reliable growers in multiple climates across the USA.

Taking the time to read a seed packet will help give you information on how to sow the seeds, how long it will take to germinate and information about how to get the best results in the garden by learning how to grow your plants and where to grow them in the garden.

What struggles do you have with seed packets?  Let me know in the comments!

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