Verdict on Seed Mats

Well I’ve come to the conclusion that seed mats are the way to go for small seeds – which I deem anything smaller than a bean or pea.

Everything that we sowed using them germinated.   The 1 ply paper towel broke down quickly so it didn’t cause problems for the roots (and the weeds grew through it too :P ). 

Changes for next year:

• I think I’ll just use standard newsprint instead of paper towel for the mat.  It is a bit thicker so it will be easier to work with and I know it breaks down quite quickly once wet.  This year I was paranoid about the mat breaking down quickly enough so I separated the layers of paper towel which was tedious.  I could have left them together. 
• Skip the homemade glue made out of flour.  I’ll just get a couple of non toxic glue sticks.
• Skip making mats for the bean seeds.  It did go faster planting them using the mats but the seeds being so large had a hard time staying adhered to the paper towel.

Here are some repeat pictures and a recap – I used Bounty paper towels that I pulled apart so that they were 1 ply.  I used them because that’s what I had on hand and the dimensions were almost 12 inches square.  For the ones pictured, I used a non toxic glue stick and dabbed it at the recommended spacing for each type of veggie; dropped my seeds on; labeled with a pen and then set it out to dry. After drying I folded them up and placed them in a zip top bag.