A recent online article mentioned making seeding tape out of toilet paper and planting it into the garden.

Anyone else read this one....

So I'm guessing it rots pretty quickly? and ok for the compost?

Hi-I used it last year. Great for carrots and the small seed because you don't have to thin them out. Just use the single ply. I used a narrow 1" piece/3 or four squares at a time and used flour and water glue..they worked great!
The only seed that I didn't use it for was the lettuce mix. My garden has raised beds 3'wide by
12' long and was very easy to manage. If you make a bunch of different tapes, write which seed it is on the tape...because it is hard to see which seed it is especially if it is small once the tape is made.

oops..folded the 1"strip in half so that the seed was covered + used a throwaway kids paintbrush from the dollar store. The seed strip was gone after a good rain.-

I tried it once with carrot seed. Since I plant closely spaced, I set seeds in two rows about three inches apart. Used a toothpick to dip in the flour/water paste then picked up a seed and touched it to the paper. Since I did this over the winter, I wanted to be able to store them easily so I used more paste to glue a second layer of paper over them. When they were commpletly dry, I rolled them up.

Planting in the spring took a few minutes. Laied them across the beds, put pre-cut strips of newspaper between the rows and covered them with a thin layer of sifted soil.

Saved a lot of time in planting and thinning but took a bit of time to prepare. Haven't tried it since. Can't seem to find idle time in the winters anymore.

Wayne

Sounds like a good idea, but I don't have the time for it either. Besides, I like eating the "thinnings". Therapeutic to go out and pull things out of the ground!

Toilet paper is made to disintegrate quite rapidly in the presence of water so it is a good choice for making seed tapes. Some years back some people around here used paper towel for their seed tapes and found that was not as good an idea as the toilet paper because paper towels are somewhat resistant to disintegration in water.

Well,the seed strip was gone after a good rain.

The idea for sowing small seeds came to me from seed balls. I just mix seeds with compost and a little bit of garden soil, seeds get coated really well and then i just sprinkle this mixture where i want plants to be. Easy, fast and simple. Let it be green...

quote:

Originally posted by Lifeman:
The idea for sowing small seeds came to me from seed balls. I just mix seeds with compost and a little bit of garden soil, seeds get coated really well and then i just sprinkle this mixture where i want plants to be. Easy, fast and simple. Let it be green...

I'm intrigued. How do you keep a seed ball from having several seeds in it? I don't mean to sound snotty, but I'm not understanding how this is better/easier than just sprinkling the seeds w/o the compost covering and then sprinkling very fine compost over it (and pressing it in, of course.)

It's been common practice to mix very small seed such as lettuce, mustard or spinach with sand and broadcasting the mixture to prevent overseeding. It's much easier to sow a "handfull" that may only have 1/4 or 1/3 (or less) seeds than try to get the same coverage with just seeds. It should work with finished, screened compost as well.

I don't make seed balls. I just mix seeds with compost and then add garden soil and squeeze the mixture and brake it apart several times. Seeds get covered with compost and soil and this works for me, because my soil is never exposed, always covered with living or dead mulch. So i can just sprinkle this mixture where i want without removing the mulch.

I did the same thing with coffee grounds that I collected. Works well. Got that idea here.

Catie, the original seedball concept was to plant a food forest rather than set things in their own zone. F.u.k.u.o.k.a did this, and made them of clay so the moisture would keep the seed safe until it was ready to germinate. The theory being that the diversity of plantings and root interaction is more beneficial to plants, because that's the way they grow in nature.

It's a nice theory, but when you've got lettuce spread all over the place, it kind of makes me crazy when I forget that some is way over there, and some is way over this way. Then suddenly it's showing up in 4 other places, and everything is scattered.

Although I am going to try this year to put marigolds in with the vegetable seedballs and let them land where they may, try a companion planting all in one swoop.

Seed balls are great for planting areas where there is little or no vegetation. They really are not as good for veggies if you're not into mixed companion planting (i love it, see the pics). With the method i described above i can still sow in rows if i want.