Making Seed Tape

Plants grow best with the right spacing, and sometimes it is hard to plant small seeds like carrots and lettuce one-by-one. In this cold-weather indoor project, we make seed tape out of newspaper and flour paste to properly space seeds in advance of planting. When warmer weather rolls around, all you have to do is unroll your seed tape and plant it in the soil.

You’ll need a few materials:

a pack of small veggie seeds like lettuce, carrots, or kale

small bowl

a toothpick

newspaper cut into strips of about 1” by 6” long

wheat or rice flour *if you use rice flour, you’ll need to cook the paste to make it sticky

water

a small jar & a spoon

tweezers

optional: a ruler

Use your ruler or another measuring device (fingers work!) to measure even spaces on your newspaper strip- about 1” apart is fine. [You can also make grids or other sizes of seed paper like we did in the photo below.]

Mix your glue: about a tablespoon of flour with enough water dropped in to make the paste sticky. Wheat flour will make an instant paste. If you use rice flour, you’ll need to do this over heat.

Use your toothpick to dab little dots of glue at the 1” intervals you marked out.

Use your tweezers to pick up and place your seeds on the glue spots.

Leave it to dry for the evening.

Write the plant name and date at the end of your tape, and gently roll or fold to keep in a cool, dry, dark place until planting time.