We’ve had a garden here for several years, with each year bringing new ideas and knowledge, yet no matter what is learned, one fact cannot be escaped.  Gardens are a lot of work!  Work I begrudgingly accept because of the benefits I enjoy.   Oh no, not without grumbling, … there is argument, and costly procrastination (Mother Nature doesn’t give a crap if you are tired), and rotation, planning, compost… etc..

With all of that on the table, any trick to spare some toil is good information to have, and the latest one we’ve tried is the use of seed tape to help in the planting of our carrots.  For a while I was against it, and still am when it comes to the store bought seed tape.  Having read many stories online where the results were not good at all, I was sceptical when Cass brought the idea of home-made seed tape to the table.

I’m sure you have the idea, so before I get too wordy, I’ll just cut to the chase.

You’ll need:

1. Toilet paper (cheap 2 ply)
2. A small bowl
3. Flour/water
4. A fine art brush
5. A measuring tape (one for sewing worked best for us)
6. Carrots seeds

How To:

1. Take a bowl, put some flour in it, add a bit of water to make a paste that will stick to a small art brush.
2. Measure out a chosen length of toilet paper and separate the plys so you are only working with one ply.
3. Cut in half lengthwise – how you go about this is your business…  roll it up and snip, fold and snip, do this before you separate the plys, it doesn’t matter, just don’t tear it or you’re back to square one.
4. Roll it out on a table and carefully fold it in half the whole way down so that you mark out a bend for later.
5. Tape the measuring tape into place on the table so it doesn’t move around on you.
6. Place a strip of TP on either side of the tape so one end is even with the tape.
7. With the brush, place a little dab of flour goo in the middle of one side of the folded TP (my job).  We spaced these an inch apart.
8. Then take a few seeds and place them onto each little dab of goo (her job).  For this, a fold of paper and toothpick helped immeasurably.
9. Just slide your TP back along the tape when you reach the end.
10. Repeat 7 – 9 until the entire strip is done.
11. Fold the TP over and press the other side onto the seed goo so it sticks.
12. Hang to dry, and repeat…
13. Once dry, roll up each strip and set aside until spring.

We started doing this with just one strip, and then one on either side of the measuring tape to speed things up. It’s tedious, but went fast once we got a groove.

To plant we just dug the regular shallow row needed for carrots, and rolled out the tape so that the seeds were in the middle of the row.  Then covered it over as you would normally, and the toilet paper and flour goo gob they were stuck to helped keep the seeds moist as they were germinating.  Even spacing, which isn’t always possible if it’s windy, meant we didn’t have to thin the rows later in the spring, and was another God-send.  Best though, is that because they were already “pre-thinned” the carrots grew to be huge!  We’re going to put this one on the front porch for Hallowe’en.

And that is just one of them.  Obviously, not all of them turned out like this, but there were quite a few monsters, whereas last year we had midgets, and mutants all twisted about each other.  There really wasn’t any part of this trial that wasn’t a success, which doesn’t happen too often in life, and Cass and I had a few laughs at ourselves along the way.  All well worth it.

This can be applied, I suspect, to any seed type that will stick to a little gob of goo, and is otherwise a PITA to deal with upon planting.  The cost is nothing but a little bit of toilet paper and time.