Some of the things you may want to grow in your garden are going to have teeny, tiny seeds.
These can be hard for adults to plant, so young children will have an even harder time with them. The answer? Make seed tape!
You can sometimes find seed tape already made in local garden centers like this Ferry Morse Radish Packet:
You can also order some seed tapes and mats from Park Seeds.
The pre-seeded strips inside come as a roll and you cut off what you plan to use. Once planted the paper eventually dissolves away leaving the seeds nicely spaced out.
The problem with this is that you aren’t always going to find the things you want to plant already done up as seed tape rolls so you need to know how to make your own.It’s very simple. You will need:
- ruler
- your packet of seeds
- scissors
- toilet paper
- a small paintbrush
- 1 tsp all purpose flour
- 1 – 2 tsp water
- some dishes or cups
First, pull off some toilet paper from your bathroom. Cut it up into strips about 12 inches long and 1 in wide. It does not have to be exact.
Then find a small cup and mix 1 tsp white flour with 1-2 tsp water to make a “glue.” (You can let your child stir it while you cut up the strips. )
Check your seed packet to see the spacing required for that particular type of seed. Today we were making purple dragon carrot seed tape, so we went with about 3″ apart.
I dipped the paintbrush once into my glue and made dots on my strips using my ruler to help me space them out.
Next I gave Julia the brush and told her to dip it in the glue again, shake off the excess, and just touch the tip to a seed on the plate. It will stick to the brush. Then when she touches it to the damp spot on the toilet paper, it comes off.
We did our strips together and then set them out to dry on the kitchen table. The bottom one is the uncut store-bought radish tape.
If you wanted to, you could use 2 inch strips, lay your seed out, and then fold it in half so it is one inch wide with the seed tucked in between two layers of paper. Then it would look even more like store bought tape. I just haven’t bothered to do it that way though.
When the tape is dry, you can carry it to your garden to plant. Just have the child lay it flat seeds up.
Cover it lightly with soil mix and water.
When your seedlings come up they will be nicely spaced and you won’t have to thin much if at all.
Eventually if all goes well, you end up with carrots (or whatever you planted as tapes.)
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Jan Zeiger
Gretchen Goel
Cat
Lisa Holt, RN, MS
Kimberly ~ greenWell
Carrie Boyko
midwiferobyn
Hello, I’m writing to ask permission to use some of the seed tape text and pictures for my church’s CommUUnity Garden. The Unitarian Universalist Church of Elgin is at http://www.uuce.org and located in Elgin, IL. I would like to make little kits for members to make seed tape for our garden. Thank you for posting this delightful idea ~~~ Donna.
Donna — I wrote you back in care of your church website email.
But, yes, you may use it. Thanks for asking first! I appreciate it!
Cat
How cool is this! Absolutely LOVED this article – how clever. Thank you for sharing this information. We are putting in an organic garden this year and some those tiny seeds (carrots) are TINY. So, we’ll be cutting up the TP and ‘gluing’ the remainder of our seeds this way. Thanks again for the info and great photos – a well done ‘how-to’.
Namaste,
Debra
Hi
I have been making seed tapes for years by using toilet paper and flour and water. What i have found out it is just as frugal to use the toilet paper at full width and make a wide row for many types of garden seeds. One tip I have is to use a syringe like is used for insulin shots to fill with the glue and dab it onto the paper.
RAGS
very excited to read this blog…especially since im in a sunporch watching a northeast blizzard outside! thanks for the sunshine! going to try this tape once i dig out to my car!
This is awesome, thank you! carrots especially are hard. This is a good way not to waste seeds and not to have to thin seedlings later (ugh).
Hi – I wanted to share with you that I successfully made seed tape thanks to your post! I even posted my expreience with it on my blog (with a link to this post) Please visit and let me know what you think — Thanks for your time in sharing how to do this!
Hi,
I really must be doing something wrong. I made seed tapes last year, radishes, Kohlrabi, shallots, leeks, carrots, cabbage, cilantro, lettuce, and probably others. I really thought I had something going, since I was making the tapes in a wind free area, my shop, and then simply laying the strips of seed laden newspaper in rows on my raised beds and simply covering with the right amount of dirt per seed type and then watering on a regular basis, as I usually did for direct seeding. Not one of my seed tapes grew, well maybe one radish out of 100 or so.
I made the flour and water mixture kind of heavy, so I could use a tooth pick to put down the globs of glue on one inch wide strips of newspaper. Since nothing really germinated I thought perhaps maybe the general purpose flour I used maybe acted the same as corn gluten which is supposed prevent weed seeds from germinating or perhaps it was the ink in the newsprint, which I remember from years ago reading that newsprint ink for the local Seattle papers was being changed and was now being made from corn products to make it more environmentally friendly. I used newspaper since it was stronger than toilet paper and would hold up better to my sometimes klutzy ways. Any ideas would be really a help.
[...] do a successive sowing of carrots this year, after these are harvested. I am going to give making seed tape a try, that way thinning will not be necessary. If that works well I might do that for all my small [...]
@Dennis: Perhaps planted too deep? Or paper/glue too thick and seedling couldn’t get to nutritents in soil? http://www.gardenguides.com/how-to/tipstechniques/seedsbulbs/seedplantingdepth.asp
[...] the Forellenschuss Lettuce, Bloomsdale Spinach and Ragged Jack Kale inside on Saturday and made seed tape for the St Valery Carrots, Purple Top White Turnips and Early Scarlet Globe Radishes this morning. [...]
The news paper may have caused the seeds to dry out to much and the ink may stop the germination! I have found thatif you cover the bed with clea plastic for about 3 days after you plant the seed they will sprout quicker because of the extra heat and moisture! The same holds true if you plant a box of seeds always cover it for even up to a week and watch as the seeds emerge. peper seeds may take two weeks to sprout depending on the temperature of where you have them! The trouble with potting soils is the dryness so keep the plastic cover on till you see the seeds sprouting!