Seed Bombs Away!

I finally had the perfect opportunity to make use of my Seed Bombs! Last Tuesday I knew it would be lightly raining for several days building up to a heavy rain Saturday. It didn't pour on Saturday like I hoped, but my rain gauge showed me 3/4" for the week. And it's supposed to rain again this weekend :) That should germinate my babies!

 here they are in one of favorite carry buckets :)

 and here's my primary target - the former Malibu Castle and Monsoon Lagoon

 oh I miss my childhood haunt :'(

 

 right by my local Metro station :)

The Malibu Castle now a bunch of ruins and vacant land being used as an "Auto Hotel" which means big cargo trucks park in humongous lot overnight and their drivers take a nap. I miss the good 'ol days when the mini golf was always busy and there was the Monsoon Lagoon open during summer. The Lagoon was a little water park that was torn down long before the Castle went under, it used to be in that large expanse of vacant land between the street and the Castle in that first picture of the location.

I think it's perfect for seed bombs because most of the land is not paved over. Also, there is green growth most of the year, even in summer. I think the weight of the trucks parking there compacts the ground enough that water gets trapped in many of the tracks for long periods of time. Many also runoff from guys rinsing their trucks off. Anyway, I flung more than three dozen seed bombs in all directions. This weekend or next week I'll be stopping for more pics to see how it goes.

The seed bombs performed great so far. Some broke apart on first impact. The ones I threw farther and at a lower angle bounced once or twice before breaking apart. Good, now moisture will get to the seeds faster and hopefully spread them out more :)

work

I also dropped some in the parking lot at the office. Lord that place could use some purtiness. I've also got it in the back of my mind to transplant some morning glories to climb up with the ivy there....

Aaaaaand - I also tossed some seed bombs in other random locations I drove by last week. I will try to get pics soon. It was after dark when I did most of them. I hope they take.

Finally, Some Seed Bombs!

I seriously regret not getting this done back in November before the rains, but oh well. If anyone's curious a seed bomb is a pellet (or other fun shape) usually made of clay, compost and seeds. You can toss them into vacant/abandoned lots and other places that have been left to weeds and hopefully the seeds will germinate and prettify the landscape. Wish I'd known about this technique years ago, there are a few long time vacant commercial lots I'd always wanted to scatter seeds in, but didn't want to hop the fence and couldn't figure out how to toss the seed any distance. Mixing it with compost and clay solves the fence and distance problems.

You can find lots of different recipes on seed bombs at Guerillagardening.org, here and here :)

Last weekend I got together with Jean and we finally made them!

my conspirator, accomplice, partner! Jean and the flats we put the seed bombs in to dry out :)

 and some of our finished seed bombs

 (mine on left, Jean's on right)

As you can see, Jean wore gloves. I did not. Here soil balls came out much smoother than mine did (and she did not suffer so much from little bits of twig/stick in the compost poking her hands). I don't know if that will make a difference in the final product.

 I had printed up several recipes I found on how to make them which we basically ended up not using :9 We broke up clay from the soil in my yard into little bits. Then accidentally added an equal amount of compost from Jean's bin instead of 5:1 clay to compost most recipes were recommending. But it was actually holding together well and easily shaped. So then we said screw it let's do it this way and dumped in the California wildflowers seed large packet (it was probably around 14 grams like the B.I. large packets). Then we just rolled them into little balls. Simple.

We set them in two nursery flats Jean had to dry, I took one back home to my place. I don't think we really need to wait for them to dry out, they were holding together well and should fly over fields with ease. We did a second small batch with cosmo, marigold and.... I forget what other flowers :9 Jean help!

 The green bucket in the pics that looks full of dirt - that's not dirt. That's the 3 gallons of clay I dug up from the front border of my yard. I am glad that is out of the ground and I have space to mix in some nice compost (and maybe my border will grow in properly this year).

It really didn't take much in the way of raw materials. The green bucket with clay was filled to the brim when we started and you can see in the last pic we used very little of it, and add to that equal compost, then seeds. I think we each have about...4 or 5 dozen seed bombs. So simple. Why didn't we figure this out sooner?!

So this weekend I will be riding the neighborhood and going after the huge parking lot/dirt plot of the former Malibu Castle... mwuahahaha

THANKS JEAN!!! :) We must do this again.