How to Sow Carrot Seeds Without Thinning: Tapes, Gauze & Hacks

Aleksan9ra wrote:
I watched a video about sowing carrot seeds glued to strips of medical gauze. The gauze definitely isn’t going to rot away in the soil as fast as we’d like. The only positive reviews are just people saying “I planted it and it sprouted.” But I have a lot of doubts. My main question is: how is the actual carrot root supposed to grow and push through the tight woven threads of the gauze?

Hello everyone! What’s wrong with the old method of gluing carrot seeds to toilet paper to make DIY seed tapes? And by the way, I tried making these tapes using pre-sprouted carrot seeds once, and my germination was actually much worse… just speaking from experience.

Lyuda, anyone who uses a rototiller/cultivator to plow their garden will end up cursing those medical gauze seed tapes 😠. The fabric gets completely wrapped and tangled around the tiller tines! Tested and proven. Thankfully my son-in-law does the tilling, so he just suffers through it. A long time ago, I tried laying down strips of old carpets as weed barriers between rows, and we are still digging pieces of them up to this day.

If your back/joints can handle it, just stick them to toilet paper, lay the paper in the trenches, water with hot water, and cover with soil. The hot water wakes the seeds right up.

But personally, I buy high-quality, large, graded carrot seeds. I make my trenches running the full length of the bed (like you taught us, thank you!), I lightly tamp the soil down with a piece of wood, water the trench heavily, and then just sit on my little garden stool and drop the seeds in by hand in a staggered zigzag pattern (two rows per trench). I really like doing it this way.

When it comes to carrots, there are a million sowing methods out there. They all exist for one reason: carrot seeds are tiny, and you need to sow them not too thick, but not too sparse, so you don’t have to break your back thinning them out later.

I never overcomplicate my carrots. I direct sow dry seeds straight out of the packet. I never have to thin them, and the whole planting process takes very little time.

Here is my method: I draw two, three, or four trenches down the entire length of the bed. I firmly tamp down the bottom of the trench. Then I soak the bottom of the trench heavily with water. I walk down the row, holding the seeds in one hand, taking a pinch with the other, and I broadcast them sparsely—just like I’m sprinkling salt on food. Then I cover the trench with dirt and firmly tamp the entire top of the bed down again.

My carrots always germinate in 7-10 days. It’s perfect if it rains during that week, but if it’s dry, I just constantly mist the topsoil to keep it moist. You can cover the bed with agrifabric (spunbond) to lock in heat and moisture… but if I do that, the neighborhood cats will turn the whole bed into their personal lounge and dig it all up!

Hello Lyudmila! I love sowing them that exact same way too.

I also have another trick: since I mostly buy mid-to-late season storage varieties, I dump several different varieties into one packet and mix them all together, plus I toss in whatever old leftover seeds I have. This guarantees a perfectly even stand on the garden bed. One year I planted them strictly by variety, row by row, and one of the rows literally only produced about 10 carrots because the germination was so bad.

I just use regular cheap store-bought seeds, and even if I get a fancy new variety, I still just mix it in with the rest. I can always tell which one is the fancy one later by the shape of the root when I harvest!

Russi wrote:
…otherwise I pre-sprout my radishes first, but then it takes forever to lay them out in the trench because they stick to my hands.

Anya, why are you pre-sprouting radishes before putting them in the cold frame? I plant mine in the greenhouse, but I just direct sow them right into the trenches. I use pelleted seeds, they are big enough to space out perfectly by hand so you never have to thin them. Radishes pop out of the ground incredibly fast anyway. As we eat them, I just sow more in the gaps.

Lenchik wrote:
Anya, why are you pre-sprouting radishes before putting them in the cold frame?

A friend taught me to do it that way, and now it’s just my go-to method. I soak them in a damp cotton pad or a wet cloth, and the seeds crack open super fast. I always plant my early radishes in the greenhouse, they turn out much better than the ones grown outside.

Soaking and pre-sprouting (chitting) dramatically speeds up emergence, that’s the only reason I do it. We are just so impatient and want to eat those very first spring radishes as quickly as humanly possible! 🤤 The only downside is that planting wet, sprouted seeds is annoying because they stick to your fingers.

Aleksan9ra wrote:
…I broadcast them sparsely—just like I’m sprinkling salt on food.

Lyuda, I always sow them exactly like you taught us, in a wide band. But the reason I was interested in those seed tapes/medical gauze is because I buy expensive imported seeds now, and there is only 1 gram in a packet! If I use the “salt shaker” broadcast method over a large area, I end up blowing through way too many expensive seeds.

Russi wrote:
If I use the “salt shaker” broadcast method over a large area, I end up blowing through way too many expensive seeds.

In that case, you just have to be patient and try to drop them one by one. Or, thinking about the gauze idea again… you could cut the medical gauze into a very thin ribbon, and when you plant it, set the ribbon vertically in the trench (on its edge). That way the fabric is off to the side and won’t physically block the carrot root as it grows straight down.