The short version: Scatter sowing, or broadcasting, means raking a bed to a fine, level surface and sprinkling seed over it by hand instead of placing each seed in a hole or a row. It suits small seed you would thin anyway: salad mixes, rocket, mizuna and mustard, radish, coriander, dill, green manures and cottage flowers such as cosmos, poppies, cornflowers, alyssum and everlasting daisies. It does not suit large seed that needs spacing, or crops you would normally raise in punnets. Sow when the soil temperature is right, weed the bed first, mix fine seed with dry sand so you can see where it has landed, cover it to about twice its own thickness, water with a fine spray, protect it from birds, and thin.
There is a reason farmers and lawn contractors broadcast seed: it is the fastest way to sow a lot of ground. In a home garden the same method gives you a bed of mixed salad leaves in an afternoon, a meadow strip along a fence, or a green manure crop over a bed you are resting for winter. It also gives up some control. Seed lands where it lands, and the gardener's job is to make the bed so good that most of it grows.
Which seeds suit scatter sowing
The best candidates are small, quick, sown close and harvested young, so that crowding is a feature rather than a fault.
- Salad leaves: loose-leaf lettuce, rocket, mizuna, mustard, corn salad, endive and Asian greens such as tatsoi, which are grown fast, thick and cheap for cutting, so there is no point raising them in punnets.
- Quick roots and herbs: radish, which is never transplanted, coriander and dill, which bolt when moved, and carrots in a wide band rather than a single row.
- Green manures and cover crops: the textbook broadcast crop, scattered over freshly cultivated ground, raked in and firmed.
- Cottage and wildflower annuals: cosmos, cornflower, Flanders and Californian poppies, alyssum, calendula, nigella, linaria and Australian everlasting daisies. The taprooted ones, poppies and nigella especially, dislike root disturbance, and the rest are sown in drifts because a drift is the look you want.
Leave out anything that needs room or warmth to establish. Beans, peas and sunflowers are large seeds that go in at a set spacing. Sweet corn is sown in a block, two seeds to a hole, 30 to 40 cm apart, so that the wind can pollinate it. Zucchini, pumpkin and melons are sown on mounds. Heading brassicas such as broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower, along with tomatoes, capsicum and eggplant, do best raised in punnets and planted out, and leeks and onions germinate too slowly to compete with weeds in an open bed. Our guide to how deep seeds really want to go covers the row-and-hole crops.
Step one: sow at the right time
Scattered seed is exposed to whatever the weather does next, so timing matters more than it does for a punnet on the windowsill. Warm-season seed such as beans, zucchini and basil needs a soil temperature of about 20 degrees or more, while lettuce germinates poorly once the soil passes about 25 degrees and can simply go dormant in a heatwave, and carrot slows in the high twenties and struggles above about 30. A cheap soil thermometer pushed into the bed at 9 am answers the question in a minute. The zone guide at the end of this article gives the broad windows.
Step two: get rid of the weeds first
In a drill you can tell your seedlings from weeds by the straight line. In a scattered bed you cannot, and a flush of weeds will smother fine seedlings. The stale seed bed trick solves it: prepare the bed, water it, and leave it for two to three weeks so the weed seed in the top few centimetres germinates. Then hoe or scrape the seedlings off as shallowly as you can, without turning the soil, and sow straight away. Digging deeper can bring up a fresh layer of weed seed and undo much of the work. Most weed seed only germinates from the top few centimetres of soil, which is why shallow hoeing works and deep cultivation does not.
Step three: a fine, level, moist seedbed
Fork the bed lightly if it is compacted, break up clods, pull out stones and sticks, and rake it in one direction and then at right angles until the surface is fine and crumbly and sits level. Small seed needs to touch soil on all sides, and it cannot do that in a lumpy bed. A thin layer of sieved compost helps on heavy ground. Water the bed the day before you sow so the seed lands on moist soil and you do not have to flood it afterwards. On non-wetting sandy soils, which are common in Perth and coastal South Australia, a soil wetting agent used according to its label makes a real difference.
Step four: mix the seed with sand and scatter in two directions
Fine seed disappears the moment it leaves your hand. Mix it with dry, washed sand or fine vermiculite so that you can see where you have been. Roughly equal parts is common for salad and cottage mixes; wildflower growers go much leaner, at anywhere from four to ten parts carrier to one part seed, because the seed is meant to be spread thin. Walk the bed sowing half the mix in one direction, then the other half at right angles, the way you would spread fertiliser on a lawn. A clean salt shaker does the same job for a pot or a short row.
How much seed? Follow the packet. Wildflower mixes are usually sown at 1 to 4 grams per square metre, green manures anywhere from a few grams to a handful per square metre depending on seed size, and a salad bed needs only a pinch per hand-span, because you will thin it to a plant every 2 to 3 cm and eat the thinnings.
Step five: cover it, but only just
The usual rule on seed packets is to cover seed to about twice its own thickness, and rarely more than three times. For most scattered seed that means a light raking or a dusting of seed-raising mix or vermiculite, which also stops the surface crusting and drying. Dust-fine seed is not buried at all: press it onto the surface with the back of the rake or the flat of your hand. A few flowers need light to germinate and must stay on the surface, alyssum among them. Everlasting daisies do best pressed onto the surface with no more than a dusting of mix over them, while calendula, cornflower and sweet pea want darkness and should be covered. Check the packet, which will say.
Step six: water gently and keep it moist
A jet from the hose will wash the seed into the low spots and leave bare patches. Use a watering can with a fine rose or a soft mist nozzle, and keep the surface damp until the seedlings are up, which can mean a light watering every morning in warm weather and twice a day on sand. Damp like a wrung-out sponge is the target, not a puddle. Once the seedlings have a few true leaves, water more deeply and less often so the roots follow the water down.
Step seven: keep the birds, ants and cats off
An open bed of freshly scattered seed is a buffet. Birds and cats are kept off with an arch of chicken wire or mesh over the bed until the plants are established; if you use netting, choose a mesh of 5 mm by 5 mm or smaller at full stretch so wildlife cannot get tangled, which has been a legal requirement in Victoria for household fruit trees and vegetable gardens since September 2021. Ants steal dry seed from dry soil, so covering the seed and keeping the bed moist is most of the defence. Heavy rain in the first week can crust the surface or wash seed about, so on heavy soil a thin blanket of vermiculite or sugarcane mulch over the bed pays for itself.
Step eight: thin, and eat the thinnings
Scatter sowing almost always comes up thicker than you want. Thin while the seedlings are small, pulling roughly every second or third plant so that the rest have room, and thin carrots twice, a week or two apart. Lettuce, rocket, radish, beetroot, spinach, mizuna and kale thinnings are all edible, so a thick sowing is a first harvest rather than a waste. Our guide to thinning carrots, beetroot and radish explains why it is the step everyone skips.
Step nine: sow again in two or three weeks
Because scattered crops are harvested young, they finish fast. Radish is done in three to seven weeks and rocket in four to eight, so sow a short strip every two to three weeks rather than a whole bed once. In warm, moist weather lettuce can be sown weekly. Our guide to cut-and-come-again greens shows how a scattered bed can be cut several times before it is pulled.
When scatter sowing fails
- Patchy germination: seed sown too deep, a surface that crusted after heavy rain, or a bed that dried out for a day. Sandy loams and clay loams low in organic matter crust worst; add compost and top the seed with vermiculite.
- Nothing at all: soil too hot or too cold for the crop, or ants and birds. Check the soil temperature and cover the bed.
- A carpet of weeds: the bed was not stale-seeded first. Hoe what you can, and use the trick next time.
- Weak, crowded plants: thinning was skipped. It is never too late to pull every second plant.
When to scatter sow across Australia's climate zones
- Tropical (Cairns and far north Queensland, Darwin and the Top End of the Northern Territory, the Kimberley in Western Australia): salad leaves, coriander and radish in the dry season from about May to August; warm-season green manures whenever rain is expected.
- Subtropical (Brisbane and coastal Queensland, Coffs Harbour and northern New South Wales): autumn through winter for leaves and coriander, autumn and spring for cottage flowers, and late April to May for cool-season green manures.
- Arid and semi-arid (inland Queensland, Broken Hill and Dubbo in New South Wales, Mildura in Victoria, inland South Australia and Western Australia, Alice Springs in the Northern Territory): autumn and early spring for almost everything, with shade cloth over new sowings and nothing scattered in summer.
- Temperate (Sydney and New South Wales, Melbourne and Victoria): spring and autumn for leaves and radish, early spring after frost for warm-season crops, and autumn for poppies, cornflowers and everlastings.
- Mediterranean (Perth and southern Western Australia, Adelaide and the Adelaide Plains in South Australia): sow wildflowers and native everlastings as the autumn rains arrive so they grow through winter and flower in spring, and use a wetting agent on sand.
- Cool and alpine (Hobart and Tasmania, Canberra and the ACT, Ballarat in Victoria, Orange and Armidale on the New South Wales tablelands, and the alpine country of the Snowy Mountains and the Victorian high country): spring once the soil warms for most crops, late summer for winter greens, and spring after the frosts for everlasting daisies.
These are broad groupings. Gardeners between zones should go by soil temperature and their own last frost rather than the calendar.
Frequently asked questions
Do scattered seeds germinate as well as seeds sown in rows?
The seed is the same; the losses come from birds, ants, uneven depth and crusting, all of which a well-prepared, covered bed avoids. Expect to lose a little more seed than in a drill and sow a touch thicker.
Should I cover the seed?
Most seed, lightly: about twice its own thickness in sieved soil, seed-raising mix or vermiculite. Dust-fine seed and light-loving flowers such as alyssum and everlasting daisies are pressed onto the surface instead.
Can I scatter sow in pots?
Yes, and it is the easiest way to grow a pot of salad leaves or a trough of herbs. Sow thinly, press the seed in, keep it moist, and cut the leaves at 5 to 10 cm.
Why did my wildflower mix come up as grass and weeds?
Nearly always because the ground was not weeded and stale-seeded first, or the mix was buried too deep. Wildflower seed wants a shallow sowing, a clean bed and patience: three to four weeks to germinate is normal.
Scatter sowing rewards ten minutes of bed preparation with weeks of picking, and it is the method that turns a packet of poppies into a drift. ABC Gardening Australia's guide to sowing seeds direct is a good companion for the row-sown crops.
Related growing guides
- Sow to the seed, not to the spade: how deep seeds really want to go
- Cut-and-come-again: months of greens from a single planting
- Cover crops: how to feed your soil over winter
Ready to broadcast? Browse our lettuce seeds, rocket seeds, green manure seeds and flower seeds.