Central Florida Green Guide

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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