Sowing Seed Outdoors

The miracle of life starts with sowing seed and it is wonderful to watch. This guide will help you with sowing outdoors. Click these links to handle tiny seeds and for sowing seed indoors, and to compare pots, modules and trays for seed starting.

There’s no better way to grow a wide range of flowers and vegetables than to sow your own choice of seeds.

Handling Seed to Sow Outdoors

Most seeds sown outdoors are either, small and free flowing, or large enough to handle individually.

Small seed can be trickled out of a seed packet by gently tapping. An effective alternative is to pick up a pinch of seeds between forefinger and thumb and sprinkle a pinch at a time. Avoid sowing seeds densely; this causes overcrowding and more work on thinning etc… and wastes seed. It is important to sow thinly.

Coated or Pelleted Seed

Small seeds are easier too handle individually when coated. They become highly visible too, but the colour will put birds off. The extra coatings e.g. seaweed fertilizer, usually provide nutrients to get seeds up fast and healthy. While moist conditions and minimum temperature are still important for germination, coated seeds will gain more protection through adverse conditions.

Sowing Seed at Stations

With larger seeds it is easier to plant them out individually. For example: sunflower, sweet corn, peas, sweet peas, beans…
also pelleted or coated vegetable seeds (they’re visible and easy to handle)
...and if your fingers are nimble or you have a special tool for sowing seed you might sow brussel sprouts, cabbage, leeks, carrots and tomatoes this way.

You will usually sow a group of 2 or 3 seeds around each station, then thin as required. This is especially important for saved seed with reduced viability. I sow the more expensive F1 Hybrid seed singly at stations.

Mark up a flat wooden batten to indicate the correct spaces you need for your stations. Use this as a station sowing guide. Plant larger seeds with a dibber or planting knife and cover over. I include worm compost in holes made for bean seeds. Station sowing smaller seeds in drills may ease the work of thinning and weeding later.

I used to use a garden line for this job, but a wood batten is much better.

Seed Drills

Compared to broadcasting, this technique simplifies the task of weeding, crop management and harvesting. The soil on either side of drills is easily cleaned and mulched. You can manage spacing more efficiently.

Sow across a 4 foot wide narrow bed if you can, not along it. Alternate different crops or flowers as you go.

Make your seed drill by a shallow cut in a prepared soil surface using a hand fork with flat horizontal tines or a straight rake. You draw the tines from side to side. Alternatively, use a draw hoe.

Only sow in moist soil. You’re always better to be sowing seed thinly than too thickly. Don’t water after sowing seed as this may cap the soil and seal the seeds in. When you do water, use a can with a fine rose.

After sowing use the back of the rake to push soil over the seed drill. Don’t forget to label your seed drills.

With interminably dry soil gently run water into the bottom of the drill to fill it up, muddy soil and soak in before sowing. Cover seed with fine dry soil; this absorbs some moisture but is resistant to upward movement and loss of water. Alternatively cover with fine moist leaf mold.

With ever-wet soil, cover seed bed with clear polythene prior to sowing. Make the drill slightly deeper to accommodate a thin lining of sand, grit or old potting compost (don’t use dried hard lumps). After sowing seed on this, cover with a sprinkling of fine leaf mold.

You might then cover with polythene, cloches or Enviromesh. While coverings will prevent attack by birds, and flying insects e.g. carrot root fly etc… grit laid down around seed drills may deter ground pests e.g. slugs, snails.

Wide Drills

Make wide drills by drawing soil aside from over a rectangular area to form a flat-bottomed bed. Use a draw hoe, onion hoe, or back of the rake. The cultiweeder illustrated here has a bar suitable to this task.

You can make wide drills in curved shapes. They’re useful for sowing flower seed into a more natural appearance e.g. curves around shrubs or fruit bush. Also, for herbs, no-thin or cut-and-cum salad crops growing into dense patches; and for small green manures and ground cover plants like medicago and clovers; also poached egg companion plants...

Sprinkle seed thinly over the drill and use the back of the rake to draw soil back over.

Wide Drills with Compost Bed

These are made as above but deeper, and the bottom is covered with a layer of peat, or leaf mold or spent potting compost. The seed is sown onto this and the soil drawn back over.

Seed Mats & Tapes

With these there’s no need to prepare a proper seed bed, worry about any seed drills, or sowing and spacing seeds. Use seed mats for flowers and seed tapes for vegetables.

Broadcasting

This method is used for sowing seed of grass, wild flowers and green manures.

The soil should be prepared for seed, and allowed to stand to remove the first crop of weeds. This becomes your stale bed.

Broadcasting involves casting seed out of the palm of the hand as evenly as possible over a larger area. Seed directions are usually terms of grams or ounces of seed per square metre or yard. Mechanical seed broadcasters are also available.

So you need some method of gauging a square metre (or yards). For example you might take a tape down one side and stand fully astride from the first metre length. You can then reach out to an area of approximately one square metre.

Second, you need to approximate the weight of seed to the amount you see in your palm. This will allow you to pick out the seed from the packet perhaps 2 or 3 times to cast the correct amount evenly over every square metre (or sq yard).

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