What are Seed Balls?

What are seed balls and seed bombs?

A seed ball (or seed bomb) is a seed that has been wrapped in soil materials, usually a mixture of clay and compost, and then dried. Essentially, the seed is ‘pre-planted’ and can be sown by depositing the seed ball anywhere suitable for the species, keeping the seed safely until the proper germination window arises. Seed balls are an easy and sustainable way to cultivate plants in a way that provides a larger window of time when the sowing can occur. They also are a convenient dispersal mechanism for guerrilla gardeners and people with achy backs.

A pile of seed balls.

History 

Seed balls may have been used by the Ancient Egyptians to seed the receding banks of The Nile after annual floods. They have been used in Asia and elsewhere, especially in arid regions, because of their ability to keep the seeds safe until conditions are favorable for germination, and the ease at which they can be distributed. 

In the Carolinas in the 1700’s, West African slaves, predominantly women, were brought in to cultivate rice using a seed ball technique that was used in Africa. Rice seeds were coated in clay, dried, and pressed into the mud flats with the heel of the foot. This served two purposes, protecting the seed from the birds, and also preventing it from floating off when the fields were flooded. I am surprised that this is not mentioned more in the online seed ball literature. I plant to write a more lengthy post about it soon.

A seed ball before the storm.

More recently, Japanese agricultural renegade, Masanobu Fukuoka, began exploring the use of seed balls (nendo dango in Japanese) to help improve food production in post WWII Japan. His research and outreach efforts has brought the seed ball back into the public eye.
Today, seed balls are fun for green-minded kids and adults, and are also an important tool of the guerrilla gardening movement.

A pumpkin seed ball growing in our lab.

Anatomy of Our Seed balls
Our seed balls/seed bombs are individually made in our Pennsylvania greenhouse. I like to think of them as the Ferrari of seed balls. They contain a combination of mineral soil and three types of compost. Read about the science behind our formulation on our science page. Seeds are scarified if necessary prior to placing in the seed ball. Depending on the size and requirements of the plants, seeds are either mixed in with the soil before the seed balls are made or placed individually within the moist seed ball. We carefully hand roll each seed ball until it’s just right. The seed balls are then air-dried, providing a safe haven for its contents until germination.
Our seed balls are packaged in a small recyclable brown paper bag. Nothing fancy, nothing that leaves an unnecessary footprint.

Seed Ball Anatomy

How to sow seed balls & seed bombs

Press them gently on the soil, about 2/3 of the way down. For added fun, throw them along the road, use a slingshot, or a boilie thrower.

Why our seed balls are special
We test our seeds for germination and make certain that our seed balls have excellent viability when the environment is favorable.
Our seed ball matrix is designed by Dr. Blake Ketchum and Biologist, Brian Moyer. Blake’s got a PhD in Soil Science and is nuts about soil and plants, Brian has totally got the mad experimental scientist thing going on!
We use 3 kinds of compost to super charge our seed balls for all the nutritional requirements of your plants.

Seed Balls vs Seed Bombs?

The only substantial difference is what you call them. “Bomb” sounds more subversive, and so it’s gaining popularity among guerrilla gardeners. When properly made, the seed ball or bomb will have enough seed to ensure germination, but not so many seeds that the plants will choke each other. Since the idea is to grow healthy plants, we use enough seed to ensure good likelihood of germination, but not so many that the seedlings are stressed from crowding and fail to thrive. Some folks who make seed bombs overload them with seed. They look like chia pets when they germinate, but the competing seedlings may not do so well.

Amazing Brain-Facts!

1. You have a finite amount of will power each day because to exercise will power you need energy in the form of oxygen and glucose That’s why it’s harder to say ‘no’ when you are tired or not feeling yourself.

2. A thought is a physical pathway in the brain. The more you have that thought the more you groove that path and the easier it is to have it again. That’s why having negative thoughts are never a great idea.

3. Speaking of which, you have approximately 70,000 thoughts per day, although many will be the same ones looping round and round on your grooved cranial highway.

4. Even if you consider yourself a left-brained person, your brain will still switch over to the right side every 90 to 120 minutes and then back again. That’s why even left-brained people can have times of the day when they are more creative and right-brained people can sometimes get their taxes in order.

5. Reading out loud to kids accelerates their brain development.

6. Reframing negative events in a positive light literally rewires your brain and can make you a happier person, as can regular meditation.

7. The brain is approximately 75% water, but you should never drink it.

8. Your brain only weighs about 3lbs yet uses between 20% and 25% of your energy supplies each day.

9. There are approximately 10 to the power of 60 atoms in the universe. Your brain laughs in the face of that figure however, as it has 10 to the power of 1,000,000 different ways it can wire itself up. That’s the number 10 followed up with 1 million zeroes, which is to all intents and purposes (for anybody not called Stephen Hawking or Rob Collins), an infinite amount of ways.

10. Speaking of large numbers, there are approximately 1.1 trillion cells and 100 billion neurons in the average human brain.

11. The slowest speed information passes around your brain is approximately 260 mph

12. Your brain was disproportionately large compared to other organs when you were born.

That’s why babies look a bit like aliens. Not yours of course, yours are cute, just other peoples babies.

13. If you lose blood flow to your brain you will last about 10 second before you pass out.

14. Your brain has no pain receptors which is why if I managed to remove the top of your skull without you noticing I could poke around all day without you feeling a thing. The skull removal may hurt a bit though.

15. Even though we say the amygdala regulates danger, the cerebellum motor control, and the limbic system emotions etc, this is somewhat misleading as no part operates independently and all need other parts of the brain to get their job done.

16. Your peripheral vision improves at night which is why pilots are taught to use their peripheral vision when looking for traffic.

17. Leaving aside degenerative brain disease, your brain never loses the ability to learn and change because it’s effectively plastic and constantly rewiring itself.

18. It ‘s a self development urban myth that we only use 10% of our brain. We use it all and if you don’t believe me cut a bit out and see what happens.

19. If you were to measure your brainwave activity you wouldn’t see any drop off when you’re asleep. You may be napping, but your brain is still working hard pumping your heart, digesting your food, maintaining your blood pressure and much more to make sure you don’t wake up dead.

20. Research has shown that the hippocampus which deals with visual-spatial awareness, is larger in London Taxi drivers than normal people. London ‘cabbies’ have to spend months, sometimes years, learning literally every street in the Capital before they are allowed a license. This process is known as ‘The Knowledge’ and it literally enlarges that part of their brain. Unfortunately, it doesn’t help them with anger management issues when cyclists get in their way.

21. Until relatively recently scientists thought that the brain was the only area of the human body that didn’t generate new cells. We now know that’s not true and the brain does reproduce shiny new cells for you to use

22. You have something in your brain called mirror neurons. If you see somebody stub their toe for example, the same pain area will light up in your own brain causing you to flinch.

Mirror neurons weren’t even known to exist prior to the early 1990’s, but now there is a growing belief in the scientific community they are responsible for us feeling empathy toward others.

23. When somebody takes cocaine their pleasure center (nucleus accumbens) lights up and dopamine and serotonin are released. Giving to charity or helping people in need also activates the nucleus accumbens. What a win/win that is!

24. Multi-tasking is a self development urban myth. You simply cannot do it efficiently no matter what manufacturers of smart phones want you to believe. According to the University of Utah, there are a few people (about 2.5% of the population) who can do two things consciously* at once without seeing any degradation in performance. They are called super-taskers. However, for most people all the brain is doing is going backwards and forwards very quickly and giving the illusion of multi-tasking. The reality is performance is inhibited by this approach not improved.

25. Your brain is constantly lying to you when you have your eyes open. Because it cannot deal with every single detail that you’re looking at, the occipital lobe is joining the dots with what it presumes is there.

26. Similarly, your brain doesn’t record memories like video as it would be easy to assume. It takes snapshots of the more important bits and then when you recall the event it guesses what happened in between based on prior experience.

27. Your brain finds it very easy to create false memories largely because of the above and the fact that it spends so much time guessing what’s happening.

When scientists exposed people to Photoshopped images of themselves at various event years prior they were soon able to explain what they were doing and recall the event with clarity even though they were never there.

There will be events you swear blind happened the way you remember, but never actually did. A sobering thought.

28. Your brain is fairly crap at distinguishing between what’s really happening and what you are merely imagining. Which is why horror films scare people.

29. The brain is very poor at concentrating for long periods of time and needs to clear it’s head so to speak about every 90 minutes or so. Which is why if you’re delivering training and you want to maximize results, you should allow people to take lots of mini breaks rather than one long break for lunch.