Chicken-n-Veg

Posts Tagged ‘seed tape’

After having a complete break from growing vegetables last year due to the rather awkward age of our son (very active toddler, too young to help, but old enough cause trouble, with a penchant for eating anything growing in the garden, edible or not), we thought we had should get back into the swing again this year. Our son is no longer a liability in the garden and loves nothing more than ‘helping’ whenever we’re outside. We have plenty of raised bed so we will let him have one of his own to work, with his own set of mini tools, whilst we’re busy with ours. Hopefully this will keep him happily pottering next to us and prevent him from digging up our seeds.

We unfortunately missed the start of the growing season as we were too busy with other home improvement projects. So none of the normal potato, onion or garlic crops for us this year, but we can still expect a bumper supply of salad leaves, herb, tomatoes, chilli, runner beans, courgettes, etc. to compensate.

The first job was to remove the polythene sheets that had been covering most of the raised beds for the last year or so. The sheets had done a good job of keeping out most of the weeds, except around the edges. The worms and ants had also done a good job of turning over the soil under the covers. We really didn’t have too much work to get them ready for planting.

Within a few hours all beds were cleared of weeds. The two beds to the right in the above photo, which were visibly still full of weeds, have now been cleared and will eventually be our fruit beds. They will be planted with raspberries, strawberries, rhubarb, etc. at the appropriate time.

We erected two tepees for French beans, using Laurel branches from the garden. One was planted with French Bean seedlings from the greenhouse and we directly planted Dwarf French “Purple Queen” Bean seeds around the other, for a later crop. We also planted two varieties of outdoor cucumbers in large pots near the greenhouse and plenty of courgette seedlings and seeds in the same beds as the bean tepees.

We’ll plant out the herb and salad seeds as soon as possible. We’ll probably use DIY seed tape for quite a few of the smaller seeds as we have documented previously.

This evening we made up some carrot, radish and lettuce seed tapes. Seed tapes (basically seeds stuck onto paper at regular intervals) are available from quite a few seed retailers, but at quite a high price, which is why we prefer to make our own. I think that seed tapes are a very convenient way of dealing with very small seeds, with very little going to waste and saves lots work on thinning out when the seeds come out. They are extremely quick and easy to use. Simply make a small trench of the required depth, as you would for the seeds and lay the tape in the trench before covering and watering. Hey presto – job done ! Perfectly spaced, straight rows and no seeds blown all over your beds by the wind.

Carrot seed tape is one of the most frequently sold seed tapes. Supposedly a big advantage of carrot seed tape is that not having to thin out the carrots reduces the risk of carrot fly. The very act of thinning the carrot seedlings attracts carrot fly.

For the seed tape paper we used kitchen roll. You can just as easily use old newspapers but we didn’t have any on hand. We use all ours to line the bottom of the hen house. It is just important that the paper will quickly break down in wet soil. Glossy magazine paper would not be suitable. This should be cut into thin strips (say 1.5 cm or 3/4 inch wide). One advantage of the kitchen roll is that it is easily folded, concertina style, to make it quick to cut the strips. It can also be made into longer strips than the newspaper, matching the length of our raised beds.

To stick the seed to the paper we used rice glue. This is often used for traditional Japanese paper crafts and quickly breaks down in wet soil. It is made very simply by wizzing up a small quantity of left-over cooked rice in a food blender with a small quantity of water. You are looking for a consistency similar to PVA adhesive. Don’t make up too much as it really won’t last more than a few days before going off. Alternatively you could make up a flour and water paste, but we find the rice glue is stronger and makes for easier handling of the tapes when they are dry. We put the glue into one of the squeezy, refillable glue pens that you can get from hobby shops. We just made the nozzle slightly larger to stop it from blocking up. You could also use a cheap icing syringe or just a small paint brush. Then it is simply a matter of putting spots of glue at the intervals you want and dropping a seed on each glue spot. A pair of tweezers helps here.

Then leave the tape to dry overnight. Don’t forget to label the tape if you are making several different tapes at the same time.