Matting...er...mapping out your lettuce

I love spring veggies.  Lettuce, beets, carrots, radishes.  There's nothing like stepping out to your garden and grabbing a handful of green goodness.

Spring veggies can be some of the easiest plants to grow when you're itching to start a garden.  As soon as the soil warms up to 40-50 degrees, then spring seeds are ready to go into the ground. 

But, wait!  Don't just throw those tiny seeds into the ground.  Itty-bitty seeds can be really hard to put into nice little rows, and throwing these seeds into the dirt means that when the seeds sprout and start to grow, you're stuck with clumps of plants that either won't grow as well or won't produce like they should.

Beets, I'm talkin' to you. 

Trust me on this.  I speak from experience.

To make planting--and harvesting--much easier, you can make seed mats for plants that have tiny seeds.  (Or of course, you could buy seed mats...but why buy when you can make it for pennies?)

For this post, we'll be talking about lettuce, but this method works just as well for beets, spinach, carrots or any other little tiny seeds.

Okay, grab your pen and paper, because here's the list of stuff you'll need.

• Lettuce seeds (you could make seed mats for nearly any plant, but today we're talkin' lettuce, baby!)
• paper towels, paper napkins, or even the cheap little napkins you'd get at a fast food place if you ever ate fast food (but you never do that, right?).  The paper towels can be the generic knock-off brand--no need to use the heavy duty good ones.  (The thinner ones are actually better for this!)
• ruler or measuring tape (not pictured)
• marker or pen
• water
• flour, like the kind you would use to make gravy, or bread or cookies...ooohhh, cookies... 

Sorry, I got distracted.

I'm back.

About that flour.  Some directions for seed mats will call for the use of glue, but I've heard from gardeners with more experience than me that using flour paste (that's what we'll be making) works better for the seeds.  We'll see.

So, to start, take your napkins and unfold them.  If you're using paper towels, then grab a few and you're ready to go.

On the back of your lettuce seed packet, you'll find directions on how far apart to plant the seeds. Those directions, believe it or not, are usually a pretty good indicator of what you need to do to get your stuff growing most successfully.

I never thought I'd be one to say, "Follow the instructions!", but here I am saying just that.  These are the instructions you'll be following when it says how far apart to plant the seeds.

Grab your ruler or measuring tape and your marker and measure out the distance on your napkin/paper towel.  The instructions on the back of my seed packet say seeds should be half an inch apart, so that's what I'll do.

Now, we're going to make the flour paste.  Pay attention now--this is where it gets real complicated.

Just kidding. 

In a container of your choice, mix one part water to two parts flour.  For all those math-phobes out there like me, that means if you use one tablespoon of water, use two tablespoons of flour.  I would suggest starting out with the tablespoon measurements, as you really don't need a ton of flour paste. 

Add a little (and I mean little) dab of flour paste to each dot you made on your napkin/paper towel.

Then add a seed.  To get those tiny seeds onto the end of the toothpick, dampen the toothpick first, then tap it onto a seed.  To get the seed off of the end of the toothpick, just gently touch the seed to the flour paste.

I'd recommend doing a couple of dabs, followed by a couple of seeds.  Too many dabs and not enough seeds means your dabs may dry before you can get your seeds in them.

Set aside your napkin/paper towel until the flour paste dabs are dry.  Since I was doing more than just lettuce on this day, I marked my mats.

When your soil is warm enough, you're ready to plant your napkin!  I mean, your seed mats!

What you'll do is lay your seed mat on soil where you'll want it to grow. The planting depth listed on my seed packet says 1/8 of an inch, which is just a slight covering of soil.

Water lightly, then wait.  Keep the soil moist and in about six weeks, you'll have lettuce!

To harvest most leaf lettuce, you can cut the leaves towards the base, then they will regrow.  (Unless it gets too warm--lettuces like the cooler temps.)

I have plans for a nifty trellis to grow my peas that will shade the lettuce and keep it out of the heat of the afternoon, but that's another post!

Using seed mats to plant tiny seeds?  I think I figured it out!