Seed Bombs

Are you the kind of person who likes to grow flowers, but doesn’t want to spend time getting on your knees, preparing the soil, and carefully spreading out your seeds in a furrow? Seed bombs are for you! And a fun project to make with kids. Thrown into neglected round-abouts, planters, flower beds and ditches, seed bombs can spread the goodness of planting flowers around.

A little preparation of creating these fun little time bombs and you are ready to go to work throwing them around in neglected areas to sprout and thrive. With our heavy constant rain in the mid-Atlantic region, many areas are ripe for germination.

Throw the balls onto bare soil, not turf
These balls germinated in about 5 days during a warm rainy spell; the clay has almost disappeared into the soil
About 6 weeks later, zinnias have sprouted up to 18″ tall already

Best flowers for seed bombs: for sunny areas, annual meadow flowers including poppies, cornflower, marigold; Californian poppies; cosmos; hollyhocks; nigella; verbena bonariensis; viper’s bugloss. For shady areas, use a woodland seed mix; foxgloves, tobacco plant, honesty.

Wildflower Seed Mix collections for various growing zones including Texas, California, Midwest, and Southeast  are $5 apiece from Urban Farmer Seeds & Plants.

Ingredients:

  • Flower seed
  • Potter’s clay powder, from any craft shop or Amazon
  • Peat-free compost or potting medium
  • Water
  • A bowl
  • A baking tray
Mix all the ingredients together and add water, just to moisten

Instructions:

Mix the seed, clay, and compost together in a bowl to a ratio of three handfuls of clay, five handfuls of compost, and one handful of seed. Then carefully add water slowly and gradually (you don’t want it too gloopy), mixing it all together until you get a consistency that you can form into truffle-sized balls. Lay them out to bake dry on a sunny windowsill for at least three hours.

Form the balls and lay out on a cookie sheet to dry

Next time that you  go hiking or a walking take a few balls with you and spread the wealth!

 

 

 

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