How to Plant Small Seeds

Growing lettuce is fun and easy, but the seeds are small, so finding a good way to dispense them into the soil can be a challenge. Dave shows you some great tricks for spacing your lettuce seeds properly.

Hi! I’m Dave Epstein for Growing Wisdom. And today, we’re going to talk about planting lettuce seeds. One of the challenges as you’re planting seeds whether you’re planting in a container or directly in the ground in your own garden, some seeds are really small or very tough to work with and it’s extremely important not to have them too close together. Too close together, they’ll end up coming too close together, they’ll actually crowd each other out and you won’t have a good crop. So, a couple of little tricks, you can use a salt shaker to distribute seeds. Put your seeds in the salt shaker and then just gently shake them out. It’ll be more evenly distributed and it will help your plants to germinate. Another trick you could use is an envelope or a Manila folder and you could put the seeds right in the folder, hold it almost horizontally, tilt it little bit and start tapping and the seeds will line up in a line and fall into place. Some seed companies have these great little tools which will allow you to change the setting and the larger number let’s bigger seeds fall out. This is also a great way to do some seed planting and you can always just use your hand on something like peas or beans or even corn, those seeds are big enough so you could just plant these by hand. Lettuce seeds are so small you don’t need to plant them very deep. You wan to make a little row barely under the surface, and then just start sprinkling the seeds and gently cover them up and give them a little drink. If they’re not too close together you can just leave them as is and let them grow or you could just start thinning them and using the baby leaves in a salad, and then eventually let some plants get to full maturity. If you’re planting them somewhere where you’re going to transplant them, when they get about this big, that’s the time to pull them out and put them in the main garden. So whether you’re using a salt shaker, an envelope, or even a Manila folder, planting those tiny little seeds just got a little bit easier. I’m Dave Epstein for Growing Wisdom.