I hate fiddly gardening jobs such as sewing seed so I tried metering
them with wall paper paste. I planted about a tin full of beans with a
pop bottle as a dispenser. With thin paste they made a 25 feet long
line, with the beans almost touching. I wasn't worried about the
spacing as I intended them more for green manure than food.

I hardly used any compost over them. I mixed the paste quite thick then
added some strong herbs and pepper with the seed several varieties,
mixed. The oils or something in the herbs thins it a little so try it
carefully. I mixed all mine up in a 2 litre plastic pop bottle. It was
easier to mix the paste powder with the water and then the paste with
the seed. It also made filling the mastic cartridge with the mix a
doddle.

The idea of the herbs was to dissuade birds. That seemed to work. The
thin nozzle put the thick paste out amazingly well. It stretched out 2L
to a line 90 feet long! A length of baton would have got me a military
line I could have run to an hundred feet easily. But I was overcome
with plenty. I wish I could remember how many soup spoons of paste I
put in -about five, I think. Three would have done without the herbs I
am almost certain.

With the residue thinned down so much it's thin as water, the mastic
gun squirts like a water pistol and you can plant seeds with good
accuracy from a standing position. Some mastic cartridges come with a
nozzle cap. Make sure you keep the nozzle cap, as it will pour out
while you fill it otherwise. I kept forgetting to put the cap on when I
was doing the filling.

I bought about 10 packets of seed last week for just over 7 quid: You
can buy cheap mastic guns for a quid at Pound Shops anywhere. Buy 2 and
unscrew the flange from one. (Make sure you buy the ones with the
plunger disk attached with a nut. Some are just pressed and stamped.)
Use one to push the piston out of the cartridge and use the other to
sew the seed.

You could try washing up liquid bottle. That should do it too.

Boy! I wish I had tried this several decades ago. Next year I'll have
all the seeds off these flowers for free. If the damned foxes don't
ruin the whole plot. I'm being plagued by foxes burrowing into the
garden next door which has a row of trees and is dark and secluded.

Weatherlawyer wrote:
[...]
I bought about 10 packets of seed last week for just over 7 quid: You
can buy cheap mastic guns for a quid at Pound Shops anywhere. Buy 2 and
unscrew the flange from one. (Make sure you buy the ones with the
plunger disk attached with a nut. Some are just pressed and stamped.)
Use one to push the piston out of the cartridge and use the other to
sew the seed.

Am I being thick here? Why do you need two? I'd have thought just use
the gun to empty the bath or window sealant into the bin (not black
mastic, which doesn't dry out), then poke the bit in the nozzle out
with a stick or screwdriver, then use the same instrument to push the
plunger thing in the tube back out again, so you can fill it with paste
and seeds. You may need to make sure the wallpaper paste doesn't
contain a fungicide: this may be harmful to chitted seeds.

I've never done fluid sowing myself, but it is a recognised technique
-- though unusual for beans, I'd have thought. I could probably get
beans sown quicker by hand.

I'll be very interested to hear how well it goes in this dry weather.
Did you find you needed to water the rows so the seeds didn't get
imprisoned in a casing of dried wallpaper paste?
[...]

--
Mike.

Did you find you needed to water the rows so the seeds didn't get
imprisoned in a casing of dried wallpaper paste?
[...]

--
Mike.


Is this a result of watching toooooooo many 'Garden Makeover' and 'House
Makeover' programmes, that someone has sort of got a bit mixed up?

Mike
Not into DIY or Gardening TV :-(( and as such, doesn't confuse the two
:-))))


--
------------------------------------------------
Royal Naval Electrical Branch Association
www.rnshipmates.co.uk

On 16 Jul 2006 04:44:10 -0700, "Weatherlawyer"
wrote:

I hate fiddly gardening jobs such as sewing seed

Would that be stitchwort? :-)


--
Chris

E-mail: christopher[dot]hogg[at]virgin[dot]net