Aster seeds for the garden that has decided it deserves better than the garden centre allows. Aster blooms in September and October when the garden is thinking about closing for the season, which makes it the most useful plant in the border.

Aster is a late-season perennial that blooms when most other flowers have finished -- the garden equivalent of a second act. Each packet is hermetically vacuum-sealed -- removing the oxygen that causes standard paper seed packets to lose germination viability within approximately one year. State law requires a 3-year viability label on sealed packaging. NASA research on hermetic seed storage indicates viability of up to 10 years under proper conditions. Every packet is non-GMO and germination-tested at independent third-party labs before it earns its Japanese woodblock print artwork.

How to Grow Aster from Seed

Sowing and Germination

Start indoors 6-8 weeks before last frost. Cold stratification helpful.

Care and Harvest

Late-season perennial blooming late summer to frost. Excellent for pollinators. Daisy-like flowers.

Why Vacuum-Sealed Seeds Last Longer

Standard paper seed packets are permeable to oxygen and moisture -- the two primary causes of seed degradation. Most paper-packaged seeds begin losing germination viability after approximately one year, contributing to significant garden-industry waste: packets purchased, not planted, expired, discarded. Shido Seeds are hermetically vacuum-sealed. The packet does not expire quietly in a drawer. It waits.

About the Packaging

Every Shido seed packet is illustrated in the style of Japanese 1910s woodblock printing -- designed and drawn in-house by Chive, the Toronto ceramics studio that has been exhibiting at the Chelsea Flower Show in London every year and does not, as a matter of principle, sell to big-box retailers. Customers collect the packets as a series. This was not the original plan.