Marti Lindsey--The Garden Lady: May 2015

Making & Using Seed Tape

A Winter and Spring Activity

Winter gardening activities are challenging to come up with, particularly with preschool aged children. When I came across information on making seed tape, I knew this would be part of our approach!

Start by cutting some paper towels into strips. The industrial paper towels they have at the preschool work well for this. Next make a paste with flour and water. Just mix it until it is the consistency of glue.

We got a sheet of paper and put the seeds of the paper so we could easily see them.

Put dots of the flour paste on the paper towel strips to mark where you want to put your seeds. Use a paintbrush for this. Refer to the seed pack for spacing. Just know that preschoolers are not super accurate.

For this activity we used carrot seeds, lettuce seeds, beet seeds, and radish seeds. The benefit with the small seeds is that they stay where planted and do not wash away with the erratic watering methods of preschoolers.

When we had added seeds to each dot of flour paste and the seed tape was complete, the tape was folded over lengthwise to protect the seeds until we were ready to plant them in the Spring.

In hindsight, I would have labeled the tapes or at least grouped them by seed type. The seeds are a little hard to identify once they have dried and cured.

The children really enjoyed this activity and most kids made several seed tapes.

Fast Forward to Spring!

Each class made several types of seed tape, which we transplanted into the garden.

We started by making a trench using the special colored shovels.

We placed the seed tapes into the trenches.

Then we covered the seed tapes with soil.

We did this in several of the garden areas around the preschool.

Next we watered them in. Some of the garden beds do not have direct access to water. We use a utility cart to bring our watering cans (color coded by class) to the hose, fill them up, then take them to the garden!