By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

Planting tiny seeds is aggravating.  Especially if you have large hands and are all thumbs.  I've tried the mixing the seed with sand approach, which works okay with wildflowers but isn't precise enough for planting edibles in neat rows.  And I've tried those mechanical devices which supposedly dispense one seed at a time.  And they just make me curse.

But this method, suggested by Mary Ellen Smith of Momence, Illinois, which I came across in the Readers' Ideas column of Fine Gardening, really works.  I just tried it with lettuce this morning.

Place your seeds in a small bowl.  Then wet a piece of thin cotton string and drag it through the bowl.  Lay the string in the planting furrow.  You're done.

Pretty clever, Mary Ellen.