Seed Tape - Mad in Crafts

I’m Jessica Hill, the slightly-unbalanced blogger from Mad in Crafts. I used to spend my days teaching Shakespeare and Longfellow to high school students; now I spend my days saying things like, “Try to make some potty come out.”

I am a stay-at-home wife, mommy of two little munchkins, and caretaker of one stinky basset hound. I am also addicted to television, ichthyophobic (look it up, kids), and almost 30. On Mad in Crafts, I exercise my creativity by writing craft tutorials and exorcise my inner schoolmarm through my Mad Writing Skills series.

I am so excited to be able to share this project with all you wonderful readers here at Brassy Apple!

This year I am looking forward to doing a little planting with my 3 year old son, but the weather has NOT been cooperating! Since we haven’t been able to get outside to do any gardening, we needed a good indoor gardening project.

Making homemade seed tape is a good way to get a head start on your backyard garden and to involve your little ones in the process.

Seed tapes are useful because they:

ensure that your seeds are planted at the correct intervals, reducing the need to thin your mature plants.

eliminate wasting seeds.

make sowing tiny seeds much easier.

allow you to sow seeds from the comfort of your kitchen chair, instead of on your hands and knees!

With a few household materials, you can make your own inexpensive seed tape with your children.

To make birthday streamer seed tape, you will need:

a small saucepan,

cornstarch,

water,

white birthday streamers,

a measuring tape,

a washable marker,

and seeds.

First, the responsible (hardy har) adult will need to cook up the “glue” for the seed tape.

Seed Tape Glue

1 cup water

1 tablespoon cornstarch

Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly to prevent lumps. Once it starts to boil and make a gel, remove it from the heat. Cool to room temperature.

While the glue is cooling, unravel the streamers to the width of your garden plot. Lay the streamer next to an extended measuring tape. Using a marker or felt pen, make small dots on the streamer at the intervals recommended for your seeds. We spaced our cucumber seeds out at 3 inch intervals.

If you have preschool age children, practice counting or number identification using the measuring tape or the seeds. If your children are older, you can use the measuring tape like a number line to practice addition and subtraction.

Dab a small amount of cooled glue on each dot and place one seed on each dot of glue.

Continue until each of your dots has a seed.

Fold the streamer in half and press to enclose the seeds.

After the glue dries, the tape can be rolled up and stored for whenever the weather gets nice enough to get outside and plant!

Seed tapes also make thoughtful Mothers and Fathers Day gifts! Make seed tape “rosettes” and use them in place of a bow the top of a present!

I hope you give making seed tape with your kids this Spring a try!