Dealing with Tiny Seeds

How to avoid thinning or how to thin easily small-seeded vegetables like carrots, lettuce, and parsley is a problem all gardeners face. There is more than one solution:

Broadcast plantings can be thinned with a rake. Draw a metal garden rake across the wide row or raised bed when seedlings are little — under one inch tall. Let the rake tines penetrate the soil one-quarter to one-half inch.

“Planting seeds thinly and carefully takes a lot less time than laborious thinning after the plants come up,” insists one precise gardener. He’s a natural for square-bed planting, in which each seed is planted singly and spaced carefully.

Figure out how much seed you need to plant one row or bed and mix that amount with sand or dirt. Sow evenly.

“Don’t plant too thickly, period,” John Page argues. “I can take a package of carrot seeds and make them go from here to Chicago. Most people want a little row of carrots. They have a big package of carrot seed. They think they have to plant all of the seeds in that little row. It’s no more trouble to plant them an inch apart. If you must thin, do it when they’re little. If you wait ’til they’re too big, you’re a dead duck. When the seedlings are one inch tall, it won’t look as though there are any carrots left after you’ve thinned.”

“We plant sparingly to start with and don’t thin until the tiny carrots [or lettuce or spinach] are big enough to eat,” says one efficient gardener. “Thin and eat — no wasted energy.”

Buy “pre-spaced” seed tapes or pelleted seeds (small seeds with a coating that increases their size and makes them easier to plant sparingly). These both cost more than regular seed.

Unless you have knee-deep, soft soil, don’t try to grow commercial varieties of carrots, or they will fork and split and come out of the soil looking like freaks. Choose a variety to suit the soil‑half-longs are best for most home gardens, and Royal Chantenays for heavy, clay soil.

Even in a conventional garden layout, never plant little things like beets, carrots or onions in widely spaced rows. Instead, plant three or four rows six inches apart, then leave an alleyway. One practical gardener plants three rows of beets six inches apart, pulls the middle row for greens, and lets the two outer rows mature for roots.

Try a wide-row or raised-bed salad garden. In a bucket, mix seeds of spinach, chard, assorted leaf lettuces, beets, and radishes. Broadcast and later thin with a rake. The radishes are ready first. When you pull them, you make space. Next comes young spinach. Pull some of that to make space. From then on, just cut off the tops of everything for a continuous crop of greens. Plant a good- sized salad bed in the spring and two smaller ones during the summer. When the chard gets too big to eat raw, cook it.

Cover little seeds with compost when planting. It helps hold moisture, is less likely to form a crust, and provides a nutritional boost for seedlings.

Seeds won’t germinate in dry ground. Keep seedbed moist after planting.

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