Seed Balls

Last year I decided to add flowers to our garden that I could cut for the table. I grew zinnias, cosmos and had one humongo (yea that's a word in my extensive vocabulary)marigold that I grew from seed. I grew them all from seed which makes a gardener all the more proud. They ended up on the table, in beautiful pictures and the remnants of them in seed form found themselves in jars on the top shelf of my goodie cabinet in the kitchen. Over the winter I pondered on what to do with all the seeds. I can just picture them lining the fields of our farm with red, pink and orange blooms. But what are you supposed to do, just throw them out there? Without tilling up the ground where they'll go they would either get eaten by birds or wash away. The areas that I have to put them aren't the best in flat ground. I needed a different approach. I remembered reading about making seed balls out of red clay, potting soil or compost, water and seeds. Combining these ingredients, besides making a mess, creates little balls of seeds with their own ecosystem. You can throw them where ever and they'll stay put. The spring rains will dissolve them in their soil and the seeds will come up without having to break the ground. The clay holds them together.

I found a place in Nashville where you could buy powdered clay pretty cheap and also bought a bag of Black Gold compost potting soil. No I do not compost... I know.. I should and one day I feel that I will take this step in gardening. I am afraid of attracting unwanted critters to eat the scraps it takes to make compost. It's just one of those things.

Back to the balls. There is a really good tutorial here. I realize that I should have made my own tutorial and please forgive me for not doing so but this stuff makes the kind of mess that you don't want to get on your camera. Never-the-less it was fun and I hope that it brings rewards that line our farm with beautiful blooms this summer. In the spots my weed killing husband misses that is!