April 13, 2012
Am I crazy or did Earth Day steal Arbor Day’s thunder? I guess that’s what happens when Charlie Brown is your spokesperson (love those Peanuts). Both days are an encouragement to care for our planet, so the more the merrier.
I’m chair of the garden club at school and I was charged with finding a fun garden activity for the kids’ Earth Day celebration. Lucky for me, I have an awesome friend who gave me this great idea for seed balls.
These seed balls are great fun to make and are a good way to plant seeds in your garden — the object of making them is so that the birds can’t steal the seeds, allowing the flowers to bloom. We will be filling our balls with perennial wild flower seeds that the kids can plunk down in their own yard and see them grow year after year.
Note: You will get dirty, but that’s part of the fun.
Happy Earth (& Arbor) Day!
You can make as few or as many seed balls as you want, for the school event we made 100. You just have to keep the ingredients balanced in the right proportions.
What you need:
5 parts dry red terra cotta clay powder*
4 parts dry compost
1 part wildflower seeds, or any seed of your choice
1-2 parts water
Mix everything but the water together. Then add just enough water to make it wet enough to stick together. If it gets too muddy, the balls won’t dry out (totally refraining from commenting, but I really want to!).
Form 1-2 inch size balls out of the mixture and lay them out to dry for 24-48 hours. After that you can simply throw them wherever you want to see some blooms.
*You can get it from a pottery supply store, and its important to make sure it’s the dry powder, not the wet kind.
