DIY Seed Tape for Your Winter Vegetables

Credit: Andrea Tucker

Supplies for making your own seed tape

As the end-of-summer vegetables are being harvested, start prepping your garden with a new crop of cold weather loving plants

I wasn’t born with green thumbs, so to make the gardening process as simple as possible, I made some DIY seed tape to help the planting process.

Seed tape can be used for winter or summer planting and is a great sanity saver when working with extra small seeds such as lettuce or seeds that you’ve collected from previous harvests. Seed tape is also a fantastic way to make sure that seeds are properly spaced out, which can be hard when you are outside and the wind is blowing, often resulting in a “misplaced” carrot in the radish section.

Store bought seed tapes can be expensive and they often are only available for certain types of vegetables. So why not make your own?

Materials:

• Paste: Mix 1/4 cup flour and enough water to make a “paste”
• Strips of newspaper (B&W only)
• Seeds (I used beets for this tutorial)
• Tool to dab the glue on to the paper (I used the end of a chopstick)

Step One:

Cut newspaper into long strips.

Step Two:

Read the seed package to see how far apart seeds should be and dab glue according to the length listed.

Step Three:

Place seed on wet glue and let dry.

Step Four:

Bring your finished seed tape to the garden. Shovel a thin layer of dirt over the seed tape. Make sure that the seed tape is fully covered. Give it a good water and watch your seedlings grow!

Planting and harvesting schedule

The following vegetables can be planted and harvested in fall, winter or early spring: beets, carrots, garlic, leeks, broccoli, cabbage, kale, collards, brussel sprouts and cauliflower.