I’d read about seed balls a few times and thought it might be an interesting project to try, but hadn’t got around to it. Basically, seed balls are a mixture of clay, compost, and seeds formed into a ball. The clay protects the seed from birds and insects, the compost gives it something to sprout in, and the seeds are, well, seeds. They are used in guerrila gardening because they are easy to discreetly toss onto a piece of land, and they are protected by the clay until enough rain falls for the seeds to germinate. They’re also apparently good for reseeding dry or patchy areas, and, as I said above, they are good for reseeding areas where birds could be a problem. They can also reseed large areas relatively quickly.
We’ve planted our fruit trees, and the ground they’re in is just solid clay in some areas. I have sheet mulched one area, but realized very quickly that there is no way I will get the entire area sheet mulched this year. A friend suggested a way to kill the grass naturally and help the soil rejuvenate somewhat, but even that seemed like a lot of work considering everything else we need to get done. So I’ve decided instead to use green manures in an effort to bring nutrients to the surface, break up the clay, and provide some organic materials to the soil.
That side of the house always has a lot of birds (unlike the other side, where I’ve hung our bird feeder, go figure), so it seemed like a good time to try seed balls. I will mention now that though I will write the “proper” way to do it, we didn’t technically do it correctly. The seeds are ones I happened to have on hand from a couple of years ago, and I’m not certain they’re still viable anyway. I also miscalculated how many seeds I had and didn’t make enough of the clay/compost mixture for the amount of seeds, but didn’t have room in the bucket for much more. Oh well, we had fun making them and if these ones don’t sprout we’ll do a real batch a little later.
Seed balls
Mix together 5 parts dry red clay*, 3 parts dry compost, and 1 part seeds**. (My materials were all soaked since it’s been raining here, which is the biggest way we didn’t do it “right”.)
Once the dry materials are all mixed together, start adding about 1-2 parts water. You want the mixture to be wet enough it will stick together, but still easy to work with and roll into balls. I’ve seen pictures of people using cement mixers to make these, and when the right amount of water is added they will actually form into balls on their own. This probably doesn’t work as well doing it by hand though. We skipped this step since our materials were more than wet enough.
Next, pinch off pieces of the mixture and form them into balls. The balls should be about pea to marble sized. Lay the balls out in the sun to dry out. (We skipped this step too, and it is fairly optional if you are getting a lot of rain at the time you make these.) Then spread them around the area you are trying to seed. About one ball per square foot is the right amount. Once you get enough rain, the seeds should germinate and sprout.
I wasn’t sure how much Meredith would be interested in this, but she actually seemed to enjoy it quite a bit. She has been asking a lot about the various soils and mulches I’ve been using, wanting to know the differences between compost, top soil, bark mulch, etc, so we talked about about why we were using the materials we used and what they would do for the seed ball. Then she helped roll all the balls and had a blast spreading them around.
This could be a fun thing for kids to make at a party with a butterfly flower mix or something, and then bring some home with them (if you can think of a way to dry them out faster without killing them), or make them ahead and send them home in the favour bags.
* The clay from your garden won’t work as well as potter’s clay. Part of my garden actually has red clay which is what I used, since I didn’t want to go to the expense of potter’s clay if the seed wouldn’t even germinate. I’m sure it’s not the same as the benzonite clay most of the instructions recommend.
** I used some Dutch clover, a revegetation mix meant for our area, and some mustards and greens.
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Go to your local pottery supply store – you can find dried red clay (food safe) for cheap.