Garden Multi-Tasking: Combining DIY Vegetable Seed Tape and Pest Control

As we were reminded in the many odes to motherhood shared last week for Mother’s Day, women are renowned multi-taskers—I am for sure.  Run through a grammar lesson with the kids while knitting.  Spin yarn and watch a drama.  Clean the house and listen to informative Youtubes.  Cry and whine about not being able to work in the garden due to freezing temperatures.  Never mind that it is the middle of May. 

Or choose not to cry and whine.  Because it is possible to be warm and cozy inside the house and still be a multi-tasking marvel in the garden.  Believe it or not, we can be productive in winter or on nasty spring days when we can’t work outside.  So what I am going to finish working on today is a combination seed tape as I watch what I dearly hope is the last of winter’s attempts to cling at her life.

Seed tape is simple a long strip of lightweight, easily dissolved paper with seeds glued to it.  It’s laid on top of a prepared seed bed and then covered with a thin layer of soil, usually about 1/8-1/4”.  And it is most commonly used with the very small seeds like carrot, lettuce, and onion, as well as radishes, that are planted in rows rather close together. 

Regular vegetable seed tape is really rather pricey—one of the offerings I looked at today was for a 15’ long tape of carrot seeds for $6.39 on sale.  Not more than 90 carrot seeds.  That’s really steep.  However, you can make your own for almost nothing except your time.  And what’s more, you can customize it. 

I had already determined that I was going to make some carrot seed tape to plant along my tomatoes.  As the title of a companion planting gardening book proclaimed many years ago, “Carrots Love Tomatoes.”  Carrots have never been a favorite vegetable of mine to grow.  Those seeds are so darn small, slow to germinate, and have to be planted at just the right depth.  I think they’re just a little temperamental.  I figure if they are planted near something they love, they’ll do better.  If I glue the seeds to tape and lay the tape down and then cover the seeds with a uniform layer of soil, I should get a much better harvest with less effort. 

I also read recently that marigolds are an excellent flower to plant to repel pests, and that they are especially offensive to the tomato hornworm caterpillar.  (Tomato hornworm caterpillars eventually develop into hummingbird moths—really cool creatures, but their babies have no place in my garden.)  So I determined that I would also be planting marigolds with the tomatoes to repel the hornworms as well as to mix some flowers in with the vegetables as part of the edible landscaping for the backyard.  It then occurred to me that I could save a lot of time by mixing the marigold seeds in with the carrot seeds on the seed tape.  They both need to be planted at the same depth. 

Now, carrot seed has one of the poorer germination rates—about 55% is normal by federal government standards.  That’s why it is often recommended to be sown thickly, and then thinned later.  That thinning takes a lot of time.  A better idea is to boost the germination rate and then glue to seed tape at the final spacing desired for your carrots. 

So to boost the germination rate, soak carrot seed in hydrogen peroxide for 30 minutes.  Make sure you start with a tiny amount of seed.  I started with 1/8 teaspoon of carrot seed.  That was way too much for a first-timer making tape, even if I wanted to make a lot (which I did).  I’d recommend starting with 1/16 teaspoon or less.  When it comes to carrot seed, a little really does go a long ways.

While the seed is soaking, gather the other supplies for making the seed tape—toilet paper, measuring tape, toothpick, marker, and glue (2 teaspoons of flour mixed with 1 ½ teaspoons of water).

Tear off lengths of toilet paper (you could also use paper towels or lightweight tissue paper) and fold them in half to make long, narrow strips.  Open the toilet paper back up and place the measuring tape on top. Use a marker to make dots every 2” long the length of the toilet paper, halfway between the fold and the edge.  Label the toilet paper with the date and the depth at which the seeds are to be planted. 

Using a toothpick, place several dabs of flour glue on top of the dots.  Now go down the line, using the toothpick to pick up and place one seed on each dab of glue, following the pattern of two carrot seeds and then a marigold seed. 

Let dry and roll up seed tape.

When it is time to plant, unroll the seed tape in its intended location.  Cover with the specified amount of soil and water. 

A final benefit of this method is that seeds won’t blow away while planting, which can also be done very quickly if the weather is still too cold or windy to spend much time outside.