Sowing large seeds

Hi everyone should large seeds like peas be pushed into the soil or can they be broadcast onto the top with mulch put on? I am thinking of growing on a fairly large sized garden and I don't want to till. And sowing each seed by hand seems tedious

Mohsin Javed wrote:Hi everyone should large seeds like peas be pushed into the soil or can they be broadcast onto the top with mulch put on? I am thinking of growing on a fairly large sized garden and I don't want to till. And sowing each seed by hand seems tedious

I'm planting a lot of english peas this year and as I push them in the ground one by one have been wondering this very thing It is so wet now, that they would probably germinate on the surface if birds didn't get them first. I tried tossing some on the surface and then poking them in where they landed. I think if you broadcast them and use some kind of cover, mulch or compost maybe, they might still need to be pressed down so that they connect well with the soil. Maybe if you threw them really hard at wet soil

For me there is a tradeoff... If I poke seeds into the ground exactly where I want them, then they are easier to weed later on. Weeding is much harder for me than planting, so I really like it later in the season if I have taken the time to plant at the right spacing for my weeding tools. Sometimes I get lazy about planting and just broadcast seed and cover it with dirt, but I usually cuss myself later. Broadcasting and then covering with about 2" of weed-seed-free compost would be a great method for planting peas if I could afford the compost. It takes about that depth to sufficiently suppress annual weed seeds. The perennial rhizomes will sprout through it.

Here's a video of the seeder that I use so that I don't have to bend over to plant. This design works great as a no-till seeder/planter, but I typically make the planter out of galvanized steel for use in no-till situations.


I use the seeder to plant just wider than the width of my favorite weeding hoe.

Another option might be to use seedballs after Fukuoka. Involves shiftng work around, rather than really reducing it, but you can sit at the kitchen table making up seedballs over a few venings and then do all your "planting" in a few minutes of scattering the seedballs about

Thank you all for your for your insights. i hope broadcasting and covering with a light mulch will do the trick. As for seedballs, could I make them from soil and compost since I don't have access to clay?

How are you watering? Isn't it quite dry in Punjab at this time of year? Most seeds want to stay damp until germination. If you're flood irrigating like we do up here (north of you and a lot higher), the seeds would all float to one corner of the bed. And whenever we plant peas, even if we cover them with soil, the chakor partridges run right over and eat every single seed.

Mohsin Javed wrote:Thank you all for your for your insights. i hope broadcasting and covering with a light mulch will do the trick. As for seedballs, could I make them from soil and compost since I don't have access to clay?

You could try. The seedballs need to hold together and not burst apart when tossed on the ground. As long as the mix achieves that goal, it should work.

With regard to birds eating seeds, it has been reported that mixing artificial grape flavoring into the seedballs keeps the birds from going after the seeds. I have not tested this and have no idea whether artificial grape flavoring is available in your area.

Rebecca Norman wrote:How are you watering? Isn't it quite dry in Punjab at this time of year? Most seeds want to stay damp until germination. If you're flood irrigating like we do up here (north of you and a lot higher), the seeds would all float to one corner of the bed. And whenever we plant peas, even if we cover them with soil, the chakor partridges run right over and eat every single seed.

Actually it's been raining quite a lot this past week in Lahore. I've pressed my seeds into the ground and put a little compost on top. Let's see how it goes