Friday, Day 6
Ageya Wilderness Center
Homer, Alaska
Seed Ball Making
One of the things that some of us have been trying, but
haven’t been successful at is Seed Ball Making. The idea is that instead of simply scattering seeds to feed
the birds, we use some clay/soil and other amendments to keep the seeds
together, give them an extra boost in the spring and allow they to grow as they
melt in the spring.
We dutifully gathered seeds and brought other seeds from
home and began making a concoction of support materials: Dirt from the path, lime, bone meal,
etc and mixed it all together. We
added just a tiny amount of water until we had the consistency that it would
hold together.
Then we gathered our seed guilds into bowls. We put a few seeds in each ball and
then laid it out to dry in the sun.
Actually we put corners on the balls so that they didn’t role down a
slope.
One of my personal errors before was using only vermicompost
around the seeds. That glued up so
well, that it was like cement and I found the ball the next summer untouched. So…. Diversity is always good.
We will distribute some of our seed balls around here, some
we’ll take home and others we will guerilla garden in downtown Homer, Anchorage
and Fairbanks. Watch for an
unexpected flower to show up next spring and think---ah, that permaculture
group is at it again!
Try it! It's fun!!!
