Making Seed Tape for the Allotment

After completing my allotment plan I have a weird desire for it all to actually be as neat as the drawing! One of the ways that really help to organise space and get those seeds in exactly where you want them is seed tape.

You can buy seed tape ready made, you just have to plant it, but it does work out quite expensive and that certainly doesn’t appeal!

After much googling, there’s a few methods to make your own tape and in our case, make use of the many seeds that we have without purchasing more! This is the method that I used to make my parsnip seed tape…

I gathered up..

A loo roll
Scissors
Paint Brushes
Small pot
My seeds
Old tweezers
Rulers
Pen

I then made a mixture of 50/50 (ish) flour and water in the pot and cut the loo roll into lengths 4 sheets long (your choice) and halved them length ways.

Laying out a number of the pieces of toilet rolls at a time can speed up the process, like a little production line!

Continue by using the paintbrush to pop a blob of the flour mixture where you want the seeds to go, on the lower half of each strip, at the correct growing distance apart for whatever seeds you are using.

Using another brush or the tweezers, gently drop the seeds into each droplet of mixture. I used one seed at each interval, but with something smaller like carrot seeds you may want to cover your back for non-germination with a couple. Personally though, I’m not keen on thinning out at all so will take my chances.

Row by row, I then added a little extra mixture in between the seeds and folded the strips over to create the tape. I then left them to dry completely before labelling & storing them in an A4 pocket folder ready for spring.