What is the best way to stick carrot seeds on paper and how to do it right? Planting carrots on a tape (toilet paper) Glue carrots on paper with starch jelly

Hello, dear readers!

When carrot crops are too dense, seedlings interfere with each other and develop very poorly. In addition, thin plants are very difficult to thin out. Therefore, it is sometimes advised to mix small seeds with sand: one glass of sand is taken per tablespoon of seeds, and this mixture should be distributed over about 3 sq.m of the garden.

However, in practice, due to the difference in weight and consistency, it is almost never possible to evenly mix the seeds with sand and evenly scatter them on the garden bed.

It is much more convenient to carry out liquid sowing of carrot seeds. To do this, sprouted seeds are mixed with a paste made from potato starch. Then this mixture is carefully poured from the kettle into the prepared grooves.

How to make a paste for carrot seeds

To prepare a paste for seeds, first three tablespoons of starch are thoroughly mixed in a glass of water. Then in a liter hot water diluted starch is poured in a thin stream with constant stirring. Then the resulting gel is heated until thickened, and then cooled. All this is done with constant stirring.

The shelf life of such a paste is no more than a day, and germinated seeds can be in it for no more than six hours. One liter of paste is enough for sowing 10 g of carrot seeds. At the same time, it will be easy to achieve a uniform distribution of carrot seeds in the liquid, you just need to stir them carefully so as not to damage the seedlings. Before sowing carrots, the grooves must be watered with water, and immediately after sowing the seeds they are covered with a layer of loose earth no more than 2 cm thick. Then, in order to keep the soil moist, it is advisable to cover the bed with a film or any non-woven material until carrot sprouts appear.

Carrot seeds should be sown so that the bottom is compacted soil, and the top is soft and loose. To do this, the furrows need to be trodden or compacted with a plank. Then the grooves are watered with water, and the seeds are sown across the entire width, doing it as if in a zigzag, after which they are covered with loose dry earth. It is very convenient to mix carrots with beacon seeds that germinate very quickly (usually radish or lettuce). Lettuce or radish sprouts will indicate the position of the grooves, making it easier to weed the beds.

See you soon!

Kira Stoletova

In order for carrots to reach large sizes, they have to be thinned out when shoots appear. This is a difficult procedure. To avoid it, breeders use an alternative method of growing, for which you need to stick carrot seeds for planting on paper tape.

  • Method characteristic

    Planting carrots on a ribbon is a convenient and time-saving method of growing. It is characterized by:

    • saving space;
    • moisture retention;
    • good germination results.

    Among the advantages are also noted that:

    • it does not require thinning;
    • all vegetables are at the same depth;
    • all seeds will sprout at the same time;
    • sowing is carried out in any weather conditions.

    During the first 10 days of planting do not need care. Watering is done 14 days after sowing. The plant is fed 2 times a year. The first fertilizer is applied 30 days after germination, the second - after 40-50 days.

    How to stick carrot seeds on paper

    They start planting carrots on a ribbon in the spring, so they are preparing for sowing in the winter. For tape germination, you will need several components:

    • glue or paste prepared independently;
    • toilet paper, newspaper, napkins;
    • capacity;
    • scissors;
    • tweezers.

    To begin with, cut out strips of paper, newspapers or take toilet paper. It is important that the material is loose. The width of the strips is about 3 cm. Dots are placed on the tape with a marker at a distance of 5-6 cm from each other. Seeds are later placed on these marks.

    Before gluing, the seeds are poured into a small container. Then a special paste is prepared from flour or starch. Or buy stationery glue. It is applied in a layer of 1.5 cm or in drops on marks on cut paper.

    With the help of tweezers or a toothpick, the seeds are carefully glued onto the tape in the places of marks. After that, the paper with planting material is dried and twisted, tied with an elastic band. A ball of paper with seeds is placed in a cool, dry place.

    In the spring, beds are made and twisted paper is unfolded along the entire length of the groove. Water, sprinkle with soil and mulch. This method of planting a vegetable crop reduces the number of seeds used.

    Preparation of starch paste

    To prepare 1 liter of homemade potato starch paste, several steps go through:

    • Bring 800 ml of water to a boil. You can use both tap water and rain or melt water.
    • Separately mix 4 tbsp. l. starch and 200 ml of water at room temperature.
    • Pour a mixture of starch into boiled water, stirring constantly.

    The composition of the paste should be thin. Mineral fertilizers are added to the warm mixture according to the instructions. Glue is used only after it has cooled.

    Making a paste using flour

    To obtain 0.5 l of paste at home, pour 400 ml of water into the pan, bring to a boil. It is desirable to choose an enameled container. Pour flour into the water in small portions at the rate of 4 tbsp. l. Mineral fertilizers are also added to it in the proportion of 1 tbsp. l. top dressing for 1 liter of water.

    The mixture is stirred until it reaches a consistency similar to liquid soap. After the pan is removed from the heat and left in a cool room.

    Seed preparation

    Carrot seeds on a tape are calibrated and selected before gluing. This is done to select only a few seeds that will give a good harvest. To do this, they are soaked in saline. The planting material remaining at the bottom is considered to be of high quality, and the one that has surfaced is thrown away.

    Before use, the seeds are soaked for 12 hours in a solution of boric acid. To do this, mix:

    • 1 tsp drug;
    • 1 liter of water;
    • a few drops of liquid nitrogen fertilizer.

    An alternative to boric acid is a solution of wood ash. For the mixture, use 2 tbsp. l. ash and 2 liters of water.

    Carrot seeds have a specific aroma due to the essential oils enveloping the seed coat. Before planting carrots, remove the excess essential oil. To do this, the seeds are placed in gauze or any loose fabric and placed in a small container. She is poured hot water and keep for about 2 hours.

    After treatment, the seeds are washed under running water. Before landing in open ground they are dried, and then glued according to the scheme. They are not processed if they were bought in a special store and went through all the disinfection processes at the factory.

    Soil preparation for planting

    Planting carrots on a tape begins in the spring. For good germination, appropriate soil preparation is carried out. It is prepared 14 days before sowing.

    Preparation begins with loosening the soil 10 cm deep. After that, the ground level is leveled with a rake. Manure should not be applied to the beds: this will spoil the quality of the planting material. They are made 2-3 cm deep. To plant ribbons, moisten the soil.

    Planting carrots on a ribbon

    At the bottom of the moistened beds, paper tapes are placed so that the seeds are directed upwards, and the empty side is down to the ground. After it is added dropwise and sprinkled with earth and sand.

    There is also an option not to stick the seeds, but simply lay them on paper. To do this, a strip is placed on the beds, where several seeds are placed at an interval of 3-4 cm, covered with another tape on top. Cover with soil and water.

    Also, the beds are covered with polyethylene and removed after 2-3 weeks. Before sowing, for germination, a little compost is laid on the bottom of the beds.

    Well, have you sat up without work, my dear gardeners? Today we will look at another way to prepare seeds for sowing, which will just help pass the evening, and not just one. Let's say right away: the lesson is quite monotonous, but useful.

    So, let's get down to business. The essence of the work is gluing seeds on paper strips. We take old newspapers or a roll of toilet paper and mark a grid on them with square cells of a certain size, for example, 5 × 5 cm. At the intersection of the lines, we will stick the seeds. Of course, ordinary PVA or silicate glue is not suitable for this purpose. It is best to take a paste made from flour. For convenience, you can draw glue into a syringe without a needle, or use a match. A drop of glue, one seed on top - and you're done! It remains to dry the paper sheets and carefully roll them into a roll. Do not worry about safety - the seeds will hold firmly in their designated place until a certain hour.

    Seeding on paper. What is it for?

    Of course, to facilitate the work of the vegetable grower. For example, this method helps me a lot during the sowing of greenhouses. I only glue the seeds on narrow paper tapes. It is very inconvenient to bend down into the greenhouse and lay out the seeds one by one. And here - she made grooves, laid out the finished ribbons, sprinkled earth on top and that's it!

    And this method is also good for super-early landings. While the rest of the gardeners are waiting for the ground to dry out, we can get ahead of them and sow lettuce or radish in the most early dates. We lay out sheets of paper with glued seeds on the bed prepared in the fall and sprinkle them a little with sand. When the seeds germinate, they can easily break through the thin paper. Only if the seeds are glued to a newspaper, then the bed should be slightly leveled and compacted with boards or shields before sowing.

    One more thing advantage of sowing seeds on paper- seed savings. Seeds sprout together, and no additional thinning of seedlings is required. And thin paper over the course of one summer season rots in the ground, turning into humus.

    You can stick the seeds of different vegetable crops such as radishes and carrots. We will choose radishes earlier, and carrots will grow until autumn. Such preparation of seeds for sowing, of course, is not applicable for large plots. But be sure to take note of this method. Would it come in handy?

    Distance between seeds:

    carrots, radishes - 5 cm

    summer radish - 6 cm

    winter radish - 13 cm

    table beet - 8-10 cm

    spinach - 3 cm

    green onions - 3 cm

    turnip onion - 5-8 cm

    dill, parsley - 1 cm

    How to cook paste

    1 tablespoon of flour or potato starch should be stirred in a glass of warm water and brought to a boil. You don't need to cook for a long time, but only so that the liquid thickens a little.

    A standard 3g bag of carrot seeds will take about a third of a roll of toilet paper. But besides her, stock up on patience: it will take a long time to stick the seeds. It’s good if you take a winter evening or a rainy day for this activity: you will do a useful thing and pass the bad time.

    Surely, you have noticed that only natural materials are indicated in the list of necessary materials. It's about about growing organic carrots, so both the paper that you then have to bury in the ground and the glue for the seeds should be the simplest.

    How to stick carrot seeds on paper?
    1. First, prepare a paste - glue from flour and water. Place the flour in a small bowl and fill it with the same amount of water (save 50 ml of water for later).


    2. Put the ladle on the fire and, stirring all the time, cook a thick sticky mass. This is the paste - the most natural glue that will help you grow carrots in beautiful even rows in the garden in the future.


    3. Cut off about a meter of toilet paper and lay this strip out in front of you. Draw a little cooled paste into the syringe and, gently squeezing it out, make a dot in the upper left corner of the strip. Then put a "droplet" in the lower left corner, and another one between the first two drops. Thus, you will get a column of three sticky dots located at a distance of 2-3 cm from each other. Stepping back the same amount to the right, apply the next three drops to the paper. And so - until the very end of the paper strip.


    4. As a result, you should get a paper strip, completely painted with dots from the paste. Why is it necessary to take exactly such a distance - 2-3 cm? Imagine that in every drop there will be a carrot seed, from which a full-fledged vegetable will grow. It is 2-3 cm between drops that is needed so that future vegetables do not interfere with each other in the ground!


    5. Now quickly, before the paste is dry, take a toothpick and soak it in water (that's what you left 50 ml of liquid for).


    6. Pour the carrot seeds into the bowl and touch one of them with a wet toothpick. The seed will immediately stick to the toothpick. Transfer it to one of the drops of paste on paper and press it with a toothpick.


    7. In the same way, transfer so many seeds to paper so that each drop has one. Then gently lift the paper strip and transfer it to a place where it can dry. A horizontal surface is also suitable for this, and even a step of a country staircase where you can hang paper.


    8. In the same way, apply the remaining seeds to the paper. Wait for the paste to dry completely and roll each strip into a “roll”. Just before planting carrots, you can cut each roll into three parts (corresponding to the lines with seeds on paper), and then carefully spread the beds into the furrows.

    Carrot seeds on paper are best laid out in furrows with compost, and on top - sprinkle a little water on them from a conventional spray bottle and sprinkle with earth. Good luck with your garden experiments!


    By the way
    Some aesthetes like to apply the paste on paper not just with a syringe, but with a syringe with an empty rod from the pen. This turns out to be more accurate, because without a rod, the adhesive solution can pour out on its own from time to time, spoiling the look of your even rows. We hasten to please: there is nothing terrible in such “blunders”! The paste puddles will dry out just as well as the little droplets, so you can still place the carrot seeds neatly.

    Anyone who grows carrots in their own suburban area knows how difficult it is to evenly distribute its small seeds in the garden. With normal sowing, seedlings are too rare or too thick, then the extra shoots have to be pulled out.

    Sowing carrots on toilet paper helps me solve this problem. Features of the life hack consist in the preliminary distribution of seeds on a long paper tape, which is then moved into the soil. Seedlings with this method of germination are uniform, so the sprouts do not have to be thinned out.

    Planting carrots with preliminary sticking on paper is gaining more and more popularity among gardeners, due to the advantages of the technique:

    • Possibility of rejection of low-quality seeds at the stage of preliminary germination.
    • Obtaining uniform seedlings without subsequent thinning.
    • The resistance of crops to leaching and displacement from the garden during irrigation or rain.
    • Placement of seeds in the soil at the required depth.
    • Saving planting material.

    Despite the obvious advantages, the technology has some disadvantages:

    • The complexity of the process of sticking seeds on paper.
    • Increased seed germination time by 1-2 weeks.

    Seed selection rules

    The quality and size of the crop depends on the choice of planting material.

    The size of the crop of any crop primarily depends on the quality of the planting material, so before making tapes, you need to check the germination and sort out the seeds. A good indicator of carrot germination is from 70% . To determine this figure, 20 copies are taken from the batch and germinated in a warm place, wrapped in a damp cloth. If from the total number of sprouts gave from 15 pieces, the quality of the seeds is good.

    After checking the germination, I carry out the rejection procedure in saline solution - 1 tbsp. per 1 liter water. I mix the seeds and dip them into the liquid. After 10 minutes, the pop-up specimens are drained, the ones that have sunk to the bottom are washed and dried. This calibration method helps to use only full-fledged specimens for sowing, which will sprout for sure.

    On what and what to glue

    I use soft toilet paper as the basis for making tapes, since it dissolves well and does not allow seeds to germinate in the soil. I cut the paper into strips 2 cm wide.

    Seed paste can be made from flour or starch according to the following recipes:

    • 2 tbsp starch diluted in 100 ml. warm water. 400 ml. water is brought to a boil and a thin stream. Constantly pour in a starch solution.
    • 4 tbsp flour is diluted in a glass of warm water until lumps dissolve. 400 ml. Bring the water to a boil and, stirring constantly, pour in the flour solution. The mixture is kept on low heat until thickened.

    Be sure to cool the paste before use, otherwise the seeds will be spoiled!

    Arrangement of seeds on paper

    Gardening outlets offer consumers ready-made paper tapes with carrot seeds glued on them. But the cost of such planting material is quite high. Self-sticking seeds on toilet paper will be much cheaper . I do this work on long winter evenings, when there is nothing to do in the garden and in the garden. Then the prepared tapes are calmly waiting for the onset of favorable weather for sowing carrots in open ground.

    Inventive domestic gardeners have come up with several ways to stick small seeds on strips of paper.

    Personally, I do this:

    1. I smear a strip of toilet paper with a narrow brush with boiled paste.
    2. At a distance of 4 cm from each other, I successively spread the seeds with a moistened cotton swab.
    3. I leave the tape until the paste is completely dry (in a warm room it is about a day), then I roll it up with the seeds inside and install it in a column in a shoe box.

    Purchasing pelleted seeds will help simplify the gluing procedure: they are covered with a nutritious shell and due to this they have a larger size than untreated ones.

    Landing Rules

    In order for the sowing of carrots to end with a grown successful crop, you need to know how to use the prepared seed tape

    The success of sowing carrots with this method directly depends on how the prepared tape is used. I prepare a bed for planting in two weeks, and not according to the principle of "dug up and immediately sowed carrots." The previously dug soil will settle in 14-15 days, and the seeds will be at the right depth. In too loose soil, they will gradually go to a depth and may not ascend. .

    Tape landing technology is as follows:

    1. On the beds prepared for planting carrots, I make furrows 3 cm deep at a distance of 20 cm from each other and spill them with warm water.
    2. At the bottom of the grooves, I lay the prepared tapes with the seeds down. In windy weather, it is better to do the laying with a partner, since light paper will mix from the grooves and the planting process will be delayed.
    3. I sprinkle the laid tapes with soil. I level the surface of the bed. This must be done with the utmost care, otherwise there is a risk of hooking the tape and pulling it out of the furrow.
    4. I compact the surface to improve seed-to-soil contact and retain moisture.

    After laying all the tapes and tamping the landing surface, I water and cover with non-woven material. This technique will keep moisture in the soil for the entire period of seed germination and protect the surface from the formation of a crust.

    Some gardeners doubt the need to cover the beds to retain moisture. After all, you can water the crops every day, and the soil will always be moist. On the own experience made sure it was wrong. In order for water to penetrate to the desired depth, you have to literally fill the bed until puddles form on the surface. After drying, the earth turns into a dense crust, cracks appear on it. It is difficult for carrot sprouts to break through such a "shell", so they sprout unevenly. Moisture is retained under the non-woven material for a long time, it is enough to water the tapes embedded in the soil during sowing. The main thing is to remove the shelter in time, otherwise the sprouts will die.

    If you put a thin layer of mature compost on the bottom of the furrows and pour water on it, the nutrients and heat it releases will accelerate the emergence of seedlings.

    Read more about growing carrots in our other article:

    Difficulties and tricks of planting care

    Behind the carrots sown on the tape, careful care is also needed and then the carrots will give a good harvest.

    Caring for carrots sown on a tape, in general, does not differ from the traditional one. The main condition for successful germination, as I noted earlier, is maintaining soil moisture. If it is dry hot weather, crops need to be regularly moistened, since a lack of moisture will lead to hardening of the paste and death of the sprout. Covered beds are watered without removing it. If coated seeds are used, the crops should be watered abundantly so that the nutrient shell dissolves faster.

    If carrot sprouts did not appear 20 days after laying the tapes on the bed, you should not wait for the results, it is better to re-sow. New grooves are made between the original.

    The absence of seedlings is observed if errors are made:

    • Tapes are placed too deep in the soil.
    • Close contact of seeds with the soil is not ensured.
    • A crust was allowed to form on the surface of the soil and the sprouts could not break through it.