I use Elmer's school glue because it's water soluble and a cheap paper towel or napkin . You can glue them on in a grid pattern. Carrot seeds are so tiny it's hard to see them in the soil. This way I can arrange them while sitting at a table and then take them outside and cover the paper towel lightly with soil. It works for radishes, too. It seems silly to sow them thickly and then thin them out. You can easily put in an extra seed if you end up with a gap.

They penetrate because they're hydraulic?

"Seeds stick together and clump with the spreading medium." I have had good results with using sand as a bulking agent, and dribbling it with two fingers. It's not very neatly spaced when sowing in lines, but I don't see the need to put anything in lines any more.

OK, I accept that the thin-paper-and-glue strategy actually works. I'm impressed. I'm just surprised that seedlings can actually penetrate that paper on a timescale of days -- long before the paper starts to break down. When I moisten a strip of single-ply TP, I can hold it up in the air and put a penny on top, and it won't break through. So how can a tiny seedling break through? The paper does have tiny holes, so I can imagine that filamentary roots could find their way through it, but not a young stem. That young stem has to break through the paper. Of course the young stem is more pointed than a penny, so maybe it can slice the paper more readily.

It would be interesting to sprout some of these seed tapes exposed on a plate, where one could see it happening.

As to not putting things in lines, sure, just mix with a bulking agent and scatter, but you'll still get lots of seedlings coming up on top of each other. The advantage of tape is less putting seeds in lines than enforcing separation of the seedlings.

Dan,

I have made and used seed tape for several years now and have had success. To belay your concern, seeds have no problem sprouting through the toilet paper or paper towel. The paper starts to disintegrate prior to seeds sprouting.

Let me list the reasons I like seed tape:

1. I can do it in the dead of winter when I have more time on my hands. (I do as Mary M does.. use a tooth pick to pick up the seed and place in a small drop of glue). I let the glue dry, mark the paper with the seed I've used, roll up, and store until ready to plant.

2. Spaced appropriately on the tape, no thinning needed.

3. Easy to plant. I tend to do seed tape on paper towels. They are easier to unroll and keep in place particularly if a breeze is blowing. I also use paper towels as I grow in raised beds and plant 2-4 foot wide rows. In my 4'x4' raised bed, we've grown enough beets to make ~30 pints of spiced pickled beets.

4. For radishes, I plant one square of seed tape every 7-10 days for continued harvest.

One disadvantage about seed tape is that there is not 100% germination so you do have some patchy areas. That being said, I still have >90% germination so it is not bad.

Seeds that i use on seed tape are: Lettuce, spinach, beets, carrots, and radishes, but it can be used for most seeds that you plant in closely spaced bunches.

Hope that helps,

tom

Thank you. That makes sense. I just am a little skeptical that toilet paper or a paper towel starts to disintegrate when the seeds sprout. Certainly paper towel has a lifetime of a week or more in a seed bed. Never tried TP. I need to "plant" some paper towel and keep track of it. True that paper towel would be more manageable in wind than TP.

Not sure what you mean about germination rate. You're saying that putting the seeds on tape lowers the germination rate? If you're getting 90%, you're probably getting pretty much what you'd get without seed tape.

"Not sure what you mean about germination rate. You're saying that
putting the seeds on tape lowers the germination rate? If you're getting
90%, you're probably getting pretty much what you'd get without seed
tape."

Exactly. Using a seed tape with seeds spaced perfectly apart often resulted skips. I used a seed tape a couple of times for carrots and disliked it partly because of this. I'd rather plant the seeds directly and have to thin them than bother with making and planting seed tape then having to go back and plant seeds again where some didn't sprout. As you can tell, I'm not a fan.

Rodney

Well, if skips are an issue, then that's just a matter of spacing somewhat more densely on the seed tape. If the germination rate is unaffected, you're going to end up with the same number of plants either way.

I plant enough that a >90% germination rate is no problem! Again, it is my preference for small evenly placed seeds. Worth trying in my opinion, of course you can do as you like.

I made my own seed tape last winter to plant this past spring. I used the cheapest toilet paper Elmer's glue and toothpicks. Toilet paper starts to disintegrate as soon as it touches water. I placed some seeds between two ply paper and some seeds right on top of the TP because I too wondered if the seed would be able to get through. I had excellent germination with both methods. That was a great way to pass time in the dead of winter.

Thanks. It seems clear from everyone that TP works, but I'm a little surprised because, in fact, TP doesn't start to disintegrate when it touches water. I can take a piece of single-ply TP, wet it, and pick it up with a penny on top. The penny won't fall through. It may be that after a few days it degrades some, and it may be that a seedling is just more knife-like as it sprouts than a penny. Kind of fascinating, really.

I really can't imagine it working well with paper towel, however.

I'll be trying this in a few weeks with some carrots. I found it VERY irritating trying to plant beets uniformly after the seeds had been soaked. They stick to your fingers, and to each other.

We use the cheap brown napkins that you get from a lot of the fast food restaurants (and they usually give you wayyyy too many). The trick is you want to use the cheap TP, or cheap paper towels, 1 ply, and not the heavy duty super 2-ply stuff. If you can dampen a corner and it almost falls off, your seedlings won't have problems breaking through.

I use the seed mat/tape method so much I even made myself a huge cardboard template with the spacing marked off in marker for different plants. Just lay my napkins over the right spacing and dot away with my glue/seeds. Works like a charm.

Hi guys, question on what you do after you've made seed tape in the winter (or on rainy days). Where/how do you store it? I made several strips of radish, carrot and lettuce seed tape a few weekends ago when I was stuck inside because of the weather. They are currently still in their 'strip' form in a dark, dry closet. Do you roll them? put them into baggies? etc? How long do they last in storage? Thanks!! Haven't planted any yet but excited to do so once this rain lets up in TX!

Can't imagine why you wouldn't want to store them as you'd store seeds. Store in a cool dry place. Closet sounds fine. I can't imagine why they wouldn't last as long in storage that way as they would in a seed envelope, which is made to keep them dry, though not necessarily cool. If you want to keep them for a long time, roll them up, seal them in plastic, and put them in the fridge.

Thanks Dan! I've never stored my seeds in the fridge -- (I say that like I'm an expert here. This is the first season I've ever grown anything) so this will be another first. Will be putting the seed tape into the fridge tonight.

For long term (multi-year) storage, the fridge is the way to go. BUT, make sure they are well sealed. Not so much because what would happen to them in the fridge, but what will happen when you take them out, and water starts to condense on the package. If the seeds aren't protected from that moisture, you'd better use them asap. I keep my refrigerated seeds in two nested Ziploc bags, which I let warm up for a few hours before opening. Some people freeze their seeds, which I think is also good, though some seeds don't like to be frozen.

I put them in ziploc bags and put them in a storage bin in the garage. Cool and dry.

Well, it depends on where your garage is. In central Texas, your garage gets fiercely hot 9 months of the year.

I am intrigued. Homemade seed tape, who knew? I may have to give this a try. I have never been able to pay the price for the ready-made stuff.

The question I have is about planting time. How is this TP or paper towel seed tape planted? I live in windy south-central Kansas. I can't imagine the TP staying put in the stiff KS winds that we frequently have here, year round, but certainly in the spring time. I've always understood that carrots in particular need direct sunlight to sprout...so that means you couldn't bury the toilet paper/paper towel with any more than just a sprinkling of soil. Am I missing something here?

Carrots need moisture and shallow depth to sprout well. Never heard that they needed sunlight. In order to keep the thin cover soil moist over the several weeks they take to sprout, many growers put cardboard or wood planks over them until they do. So much for sunlight.

If you lay single-ply TP on the soil, and water it so that it "melts" into the soil, it's never going to blow away. Throw a bit of cover soil on that, and you're good to go.

I'm in Northeastern OK. I used the tapes that I made and stored over the winter for planting in the spring, so I used mine up before it got too warm.

itsmce, hi from dry, sometimes (very) windy southern California! :)

I plant my carrot mats by taking about 1/4" of soil off the area I'm going to plant them, lay the mats in, immediately sprinkle some water on the napkin/tp to hold it in place from the wind, and then put the 1/4" of soil I removed back over, water it again to moisten everything in place.

I then place a piece of scrap plywood over the area I planted (sometimes I'll put the wood up on rock "legs" just to keep it from being directly on any potential seedlings). Keeps the carrots moist even without daily watering - usually I'll water them every other day when it's super hot/dry. Remove the scrap wood once they start sprouting.

Works a charm.