What is Seed Tape, Why People Use It, and How to Make Your Own

One of the great things about getting a few seasons of experience gardening is that, like any hobby or craft, there are loads of tricks to pick up along the way. One of the great challenges when planting veggies with tiny seeds, maybe carrots (This hyperlink is a preview. The article hadn’t yet been published.) or leeks, is that they are hard to space very well.

The seed packets suggest sowing this or that one to two inches apart and thinning it out to six inches once it’s four inches, and by the end of it all, the whole thing feels like a mystery. How does one space a seed smaller than a lentil accurately? Seed packet, are you serious that you want me to pull out more carrots than I let grow? This is madness!

Lots of veteran gardeners will opt for something called seed tape in this situation. It’s easy to use. It’s easy to make it home. And, it makes spacing your seeds a much more realistic endeavor. So, here’s how it works with seed tape.

What is Seed Tape?

Seed tape is a strip of tacky, biodegradable material that allows gardeners to plot out seeds as precisely as they like before planting. The tacky ingredient holds the seeds in place, and the biodegradable material can be stretched out and buried as is. Instead of planting individual seeds or casts of seeds, they will be spaced well from the get-go.

Then, the gardener can create an appropriately deep trough to put the seed tape in. The seed tape holds the seeds long enough for them to germinate and set roots, and the seedlings will pop up spaced much more accurately so that not nearly as many are wasted via thinning. Seed tape is a serious gardening hack in this way.

Why People Use It?

So, we’ve already dipped into some of the reasons people like to use seed tape, but it’s worth noting that they do bring about several advantages:

1. Because the seeds are spaced well before going into the ground, the tedious labor of thinning out clumps of seedlings is significantly reduced. This ultimately saves time and a lot of hunching.
2. Spacing seeds on seed tape, rather than spreading an overabundance in the garden, means that there are far fewer seeds wasted in the thinning process. That means less money is spent on seeds that’ll never see maturity.
3. The labor of putting seeds on seed tape is far less tiresome than working them into a row in the garden bed. Seed tape can be prepared on the sofa or at the kitchen table comfortably rain or shine, and planted in one easy swoop in the garden.
4. The seed tape keeps seeds in place when rain comes in and might wash away or move seeds around due to pooling. It also keeps seeds from being blown askew in the wind. Seed tape keeps the seeds where they should be.

How to Make Your Own Seed Tape?

Like most good ideas, the cogs of capitalism have jumped on the bandwagon and produced seed tape to buy at big box stores. However, it’s very easy to make at home and costs next to nothing. It involves a bit of flour and water to make simple glue, and toilet paper or paper towels work fine for the biodegradable material.

Mix flour with water in a two-to-one ratio to make a basic glue. Make sure it isn’t too watery so that the seeds germinate when you want them to do so. Unroll a desired length of toilet paper and fold it in half lengthwise. Measure and mark the spot to put seeds. Stick the seeds to the appropriately spaced mark with the flour-water glue. Finally, seal the two halves of the toilet paper together.

That’s seed tape! Once the tape is ready, it can go out to the garden. It should be buried at the desired depth for the particular seed. For small seeds, that usually means a quarter of an inch or less of soil. No worries: the seed tape will keep those tiny seeds where they are supposed to be.

This is a fantastic way of getting those fiddly seeds set rather than fumbling with a packet and a handful of thumbs in a windy garden. Instead, it can be as easy and quick as stretching a length of seed tape a few feet and planting 75 radishes or carrots or onions or what have you.

Related Content:

• Growing Stone Fruits from Seed
• Self-Seeding Edible and Medicinal Plants
• 12 Tips on Sowing, Growing, Harvesting, and Eating Seeds
• How To Start Growing Garden Seeds Using a Water Jug Greenhouse [Video]
• What You Need to Know About Growing Trees from Seeds

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