By PAUL WHEATON
Ever thought of lobbing seeds into your field? No tilling, just a good arm?
Seed balls – a combination of seeds, compost and clay – are used in no-tilling cultivation as a way to get seeds established in a given area. They don’t actually have to be thrown (though many associate seed bombs/balls with guerrilla gardening ).
This technique is inspired from the work of Fukuoka and generally involves a mixture of 1/3 seeds (seeds mixtures are fine as long as they are roughly the same size and germinate at the same rate), 1/3 compost and 1/3 clay (clay holds the ball together until the rain begins the germination process).
Here, as in much of the permaculture discussion on seed balls , there seems to be a lot of emphasis on making actual balls.
Whether by hand or by using the contraption, it seems like a lot of work.
I understand Fukuoka to have also experimented with pushing the seed ball glop through a mesh to end up with big square snakes which easily break up. So instead of balls I guess you have “cubes”. This method seemed about ten times faster.
Brian Kerkvliet of Inspiration Farm, Washington, demonstrates the process of making seed balls:
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Paul Wheaton is is the tyrannical ruler of two on-line communities. One is about permaculture
and one is about software engineering
. There is even one for Missoula
. Paul has written several permaculture articles
starting with one on lawn care
that he presented at the MUD Project
17 years ago, including articles on raising chickens
, cast iron
and diatomaceous earth
. Paul also regularly uploads permaculture videos
and permaculture podcasts
. In his spare time, Paul has plans for world domination and is currently shopping for a hollowed out volcano in the Missoula area, with good submarine access.
See all of Paul’s contributions to Make it Missoula here .
