By Bill Ward
Published in The Boerne Star on September 30, 2005
October is a good month for planting wildflower seeds, but many people find sowing wildflower seeds to be a frustrating proposition. Too often the seeds do not produce the colorful stands of spring flowers the planter visualizes. There probably are a number of reasons for this, such as planting seeds too deep in the soil, poor watering methods, weather that is too dry or too wet or too windy and wildlife eating exposed seeds.
Planting with seed balls seems to greatly improve chances of getting a good crop of wildflowers. The Operation NICE! (Natives Instead of the Common Exotics!) recommended plants for October are native wildflowers planted via seed balls.
Seed balls are marble-size spheres made of low-fire red clay, soil humus, seeds and water. They have been called “little adobe gardens.” Reportedly, seed balls work on all scales, from small gardens to large plots of land. They can be broadcast by hand or air dropped over broad areas. Experiments with seed-balls as an effective way to restore natural vegetation are underway in certain desert areas of Trans Pecos Texas and the western U.S. In Kendall County, Kathryn Long scattered seed balls to restore some native grasses in her fields and Nina Nye used seed balls for sowing wildflower seeds on her ranch.
Here in Boerne, as part of the dedication ceremony for the Old Number 9 Greenway, wildflower seeds were spread with seed balls made by students at Kendall Elementary School.
Almost anyone can make seed balls. The Adobe Seed Ball Consortium (www.seedballs .com) recommends the following recipe:
- 1 part dry seeds or seed mixes
- 3 parts dry compost with fungi and soil microbes
- 5 parts dry red clay (not gray or white clay)
Mix ingredients dry, turning and sifting to coat seeds with soil, then clay.
Add 1 to 2 parts water a little at a time until the clay mix is easily workable.
Wet clay is pinched off the main mass and rolled between palms of the hands until smooth and round. As the ball is rolled in the hands the clay begins to set up. Continue to roll the clay until this polymerization is felt.
Let finished seed balls dry for 24 hours.
About one seed ball per square foot of ground is recommended.
Native wildflower seeds can be purchased at local nurseries participating in Operation NICE! (Hill Country African Violets and Nursery, Barkley’s Nursery Center and Maldonado Landscape and Nursery). A good place to buy mixes of truly native seeds is Native American Seed in Junction (www.seedsource.com). Another good орtion is to collect seeds, with permission, from local stands of native wildflowers.
Red clay can be purchased at Hobby Lobby or Clayworld in San Antonio. Kathryn Long and Nina Nye both bought air-floated red clay at Clayworld, 1231 W. Martin St. Long reports that $25 worth of red clay made four or five gallons of seed balls. Smaller amounts of red clay probably can be purchased at hobby stores. The local clayey soils apparently are not suitable for seed balls.
Humus and soil should be gathered locally. Desirable micro-organisms can be grown in a compost pile by adding leaflitter from the base of the leaf floor under native trees and decayed vegetative matter from beneath native shrubs and grasses. These are beneficial ingredients for inoculating compost with critical fungi and bacteria.
Because seed balls have all the ingredients to promote germination of seeds and healthy growth of plants, they could be a threat to the local ecology if they are used to spread alien plants. Be certain the seeds you spread are Texas natives!
