Seed Bombs
Spread the seeds of love, and promote peace & sustainability by making your own seed bombs— lumps of mud packed with wildflower seeds, clay and a little bit of compost and water. Throw the bombs around gardens in your community, and they will bloom into native plants! Want to spread a message too? Design and personalise a message of peace & sustainability on a swing tag for your bombs.
Time: 1 hour
Skill: No technical skills required. Small amount of research might be needed to find out what seeds are native to your community.
Ages: All ages
Background
Japanese biologist and farmer Masanobu Fukuoka, athor of the One Straw Revolution, is credited to creating the first clay seed ball method, made by mixing clay soil, compost, and seeds into a ration of 5:1:1 and binding with water, and the method gained popularity globally as they are easy to make, customisable to local conditions, made from natural ingredients, and can be moulded into any shape. Since then, individuals and groups have began moulding them into shapes to replicate grenades, revolvers, and bombs.
As an act of “guerrilla gardening,” these clay-based seed bombs build on the guerrilla seed bombs that have a interesting history that begins in trash-laden 1970s New York, when a group called The Green Guerillas created two designs for “green grenades” made from peat moss and chemical fertilisers within either a glass Christmas bauble or plastic balloons, which were then used to bomb the city with some greenery. Since then, seed bombing as an act of guerrilla gardening has evolved to use more sustainable materials (peat-moss is rather controversial, as is throwing around glass and other household objects), like those first articulate by Masanobu Fukuoka.
Curious to learn more? Check out The Seed Ball Story by Jim Bones, a personal story about how to make and use seed balls for reforestation, land rehabilitation and agriculture based on the ideas of Masanobu Fukuoka.