What……You Don’t Stick Your Seeds to Toilet Paper Too?
Posted on April 22, 2009 by Ben Fairfield
The following is a guest post from one of our members Robyn Morton who cracks me up on her blog, Adapting in Place.
By: Robyn Morton, Adapting in Place Blog
Allow me to introduce you to a most delightful invention, the seed tape. Okay, in all honesty, this is more of a seed “sheet” than seed tape, but the principle is the same. There is a real seed tape near the top of the photo, which is simply seeds in one row, rather than in lots of rows. Depends on how you want to plant, I suppose.
Anyway, here’s the idea: you take some kind of paper product, something that will degrade very quickly and you stick seeds to it. Then you put that in your garden, cover it with soil to an appropriate depth, water, and you’re done! As you see above, I’ve chosen to use toilet paper (unbleached recycled stuff), which will obviously degrade very quickly indeed. You probably can use regular paper, but I’d worry about if it’s been bleached (which in all likelihood it has). Newspaper would probably work a treat, too. I stuck the seeds down using a thick mixture of flour & water. I’ve heard tell that cornstarch works well, too, and I even saw recommendations for Elmer’s glue. Now, I doubt there’d be any problems with using actual glue, but something about putting that stuff in my garden put me off. So I went with flour & water.
Anyway, I stole one of my kid’s watercolor paintbrushes and dabbed the flour-water mixture at appropriate intervals for the seeds I was planting. In this case I used 1″ intervals, as I was seeding carrots. I then dropped 1-2 seeds per splotch, continued till the whole sheet was covered, and set it aside to dry. If you want tapes instead of sheets, just cut them apart once dry. Anyway, when completely dry (and I do me completely–just imagine what would happen if the sheets stuck to each other! Disaster!), I rolled them up and set them aside until ready to plant.
Okay, so why did I do this? Well, partially because I have a perverse desire to have the only perfectly spaced carrots in the city. If you’ve ever seeded carrots yourself you’ll probably understand the appeal of the tape method. No hunching over a garden bed, achingly spacing eensy-teensy seeds 1″ apart from each other for row after row after row after row after…. No one really makes it that far, either. Most folks get, like, maybe two rows into this hellish process before they just say forget it and start sprinkling seeds down the rows. This leads to the obvious problems of over-seeding in some patches, under-seeding in others, lots and lots of thinning, stunted carrots, wasted space, broken back, dogs & cats living together… anarchy. Nope, anarchy must be averted–order will be imposed. I sat at my kitchen table, listening to a movie playing in the other room, no hunched back, and worked for a few hours on and off finishing my sheets. Planting them took like two minutes tops.
I don’t think this process is worthwhile if you have larger seeds–like beet or bean seeds–or if you’re planting small square feet squares, a la Square Foot Gardening. But, if you’re planting lots of fiddling teeny seeds in 1″ spacing over 16 square feet…… forget that. I’ll make a tape, thanks.
Posted on April 22, 2009 by Ben Fairfield
The following is a guest post from one of our members Robyn Morton who cracks me up on her blog, Adapting in Place.
By: Robyn Morton, Adapting in Place Blog
Allow me to introduce you to a most delightful invention, the seed tape. Okay, in all honesty, this is more of a seed “sheet” than seed tape, but the principle is the same. There is a real seed tape near the top of the photo, which is simply seeds in one row, rather than in lots of rows. Depends on how you want to plant, I suppose.
Anyway, here’s the idea: you take some kind of paper product, something that will degrade very quickly and you stick seeds to it. Then you put that in your garden, cover it with soil to an appropriate depth, water, and you’re done! As you see above, I’ve chosen to use toilet paper (unbleached recycled stuff), which will obviously degrade very quickly indeed. You probably can use regular paper, but I’d worry about if it’s been bleached (which in all likelihood it has). Newspaper would probably work a treat, too. I stuck the seeds down using a thick mixture of flour & water. I’ve heard tell that cornstarch works well, too, and I even saw recommendations for Elmer’s glue. Now, I doubt there’d be any problems with using actual glue, but something about putting that stuff in my garden put me off. So I went with flour & water.
Anyway, I stole one of my kid’s watercolor paintbrushes and dabbed the flour-water mixture at appropriate intervals for the seeds I was planting. In this case I used 1″ intervals, as I was seeding carrots. I then dropped 1-2 seeds per splotch, continued till the whole sheet was covered, and set it aside to dry. If you want tapes instead of sheets, just cut them apart once dry. Anyway, when completely dry (and I do me completely–just imagine what would happen if the sheets stuck to each other! Disaster!), I rolled them up and set them aside until ready to plant.
Okay, so why did I do this? Well, partially because I have a perverse desire to have the only perfectly spaced carrots in the city. If you’ve ever seeded carrots yourself you’ll probably understand the appeal of the tape method. No hunching over a garden bed, achingly spacing eensy-teensy seeds 1″ apart from each other for row after row after row after row after…. No one really makes it that far, either. Most folks get, like, maybe two rows into this hellish process before they just say forget it and start sprinkling seeds down the rows. This leads to the obvious problems of over-seeding in some patches, under-seeding in others, lots and lots of thinning, stunted carrots, wasted space, broken back, dogs & cats living together… anarchy. Nope, anarchy must be averted–order will be imposed. I sat at my kitchen table, listening to a movie playing in the other room, no hunched back, and worked for a few hours on and off finishing my sheets. Planting them took like two minutes tops.
I don’t think this process is worthwhile if you have larger seeds–like beet or bean seeds–or if you’re planting small square feet squares, a la Square Foot Gardening. But, if you’re planting lots of fiddling teeny seeds in 1″ spacing over 16 square feet…… forget that. I’ll make a tape, thanks.
6 comments:
If you visit the real site this is one of the comments. This is even better!!!
GOod luck
Neat! The version I'd heard used paper towels - wet the whole towel strip and don't use any "glue" and cover with a second strip - the two wet strips pressed together are supposed to hold everything in place. Haven't tried it, tho...
What a great idea- I really need to get my garden planted. I will try this out!
Kat- I was going to ask you if you have ever used or considered a diaper service here? There is one in Boise and it is very reasonable. Just wondered if you had any feedback since I really see you as a green, environmentally friendly mom. I used cloth with the boys for the first year...
What a great idea. Now I need a garden. I would like to do raised beds but I need to figure out how I want to do it. Maybe for next year.
kat- you are so smart. I'm glad you posted this because I need to learn quite a bit more about gardening. I needed to talk to you last week about this. still feeling half broken over the seeds I planted while the weather was beautiful.
Also - I miss you. I miss our girlie talks and walks.
You haven't blogged in a while. Are you doing okay?
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