Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: scabs on February 27, 2010, 15:53
-
What's the general opinion of them?
I've never used them but picked some leek up yesterday - it will be my first time trying leeks too, so this should be interesting...
-
They work but they're very expensive for what you get, and you're limited in varieties as well as straight lines which is awkward if you intensively plant.
-
Yes, £2.55 for 16m, but it seemed like an interesting idea (its new to me anyway!)
-
I picked up one of the garden mags/paper only last week and it showed how to make your own reed tapes using cornflower starch paste and other stuff??????? Maybe someone could post the recipe on here? ???
-
they are cheap if you buy them at lidl 99 cents here in ireland :D i've never used them though
-
I tried them ages ago Scabs, but didn't like them. They seemed to take forever to germinate, it seemed as if the tape had to almost disintegrate first.
Fingers crossed yours are better!
-
Hi Scabs, I have a few of these to try this year as I cannot handle seeds well as my hands have no feeling. I have like you bought leeks, but also some salad mix and little gems. I also have some mats with herbs in.
I know they may not be cheaper but I waste a lot of seed with my hands so for me it will be a good experiment.
-
I used Parsnip seed tape last year, and i had great results. :)
-
ya i'd recommend it for things like parsnips and carrots as there would be less thinning needed and so there would be less carrot fly :D
-
Thanks peeps, we'll see how we go. :)
-
i have some of these to try too! Have you planted yours already ?
-
Not planted yet, no.
Still very cold and extremely wet at the moment.
-
im trying some for the first time this year scabs got a pack of carrot,parsnip,swede and celeriac tapes at two metre long respectively.try anything once :D
-
I'm trying some for the first time this year too. It was actually the only seeds I could find for Titchmarsh organic Ice King lettuce. I grew this lettuce last year and it's the nicest lettuce I ever tasted, as well as being very tough and easy to grow. For some reason none of the shops near me seem to have these seeds this year so I had to grab the seed tape.
And as far as I know there's nothing wrong with my hands, but I still seem to have an inability to plant small seeds in the ground without dropping hundreds of them where I meant to drop a few :)
-
I've bought a couple of seed mats that fit into 6" pot for rocket this year to see what they are like.
-
I found them pricey and had problems with squirels or cats digging them up - if it was just seeds then only a few get disturbed but with the tape they pulled up lengths of the stuff and I had to try and replant. I liked the idea of not having to thin carrots, but found that it only took a couple to not germinate and I ended up with large gaps. I will not be using them this year.
-
Was just going to ask the same question...saw them in LDLs and wondered how they do? :unsure:
Glad to see I am not alone in managing to drop more seeds than I actually plant! :)
I think I will give them a try...especially for carrots and parsnips.
Is tape a new thing or has it always been around?
-
They've been around for donkey's years.
I'd listen to what bigben said about them, especially with regard to the sporadic germination and large gaps.
-
I have found them to be great, BUT only the carrot ones! For leeks etc, a pinch in a pot does me fine.
I got my best ever crop from them last year. It helps if you mark out the drill, put some sand into the bottom of it, water the drill then put the tapes on top, then cover with a light composting, this makes them stick into the soil and start breaking up immediately. I found that if you tried to put them straight into the soil they twist in the breeze and the germination is a bit lower.
My only criticism of them is that you are bound by the length the seed companies provide them in. It would be nice if you could buy short (1m), medium (3m), etc.
-
There was an artical in Kitchen Garden about these recently and they are supposed to work better as something in the paper mix helps germination, but that wasn't the original intention, just a fortunate by product :D