How to create seed bombs

If perfectly planned and planted gardens aren’t your idea of fun, why not try your hand at guerrilla gardening by making and using seed bombs to spread some colour around your garden and neighbourhood.

The Internet is crawling with instructions on how to make the perfect seed bomb. While many are from countries far and wide, many of the same principles apply when using seeds that are indigenous to South Africa or KwaZulu Natal.

 

Plan your campaign

Before seed bombing, decide where you are going to launch your campaign. Find a site that gets the necessary sunshine and then select your seeds accordingly.

Seed bombs don’t have to just be sun-loving annuals, some, such as foxgloves would suit a shadier site while wildflowers like cosmos and sunflowers which often grow alongside streets in KZN are perfect candidates for guerrilla gardening.

Seeds from Carpet geranium, wild rose – better known as Kapokbossie, Snake flower and Leonotus leonorus better known as wild dagga but not to be confused with the illegal plant, are also great options. Some gardening stores have wildflower mixes in packets ready mixed that you can buy and just use in your bombs as is.

Once you have your seed, which you can either mix if they grow well together, or put into separate seed-bombs, you will need to go about making them into clay-based seed bombs, the simplest type to make yourself.

 

Flower power

The instructions are as easy as making cookies with a child, and much like making mud pies.

What you will need:

ü Flower seed

ü Potter’s clay powder, from any craft shop

ü Peat-free compost

ü Water

ü A bowl

ü A baking tray

Instructions:

Mix the seed, clay, and compost together in a bowl to a ratio of three handfuls of clay, five handfuls of compost and one handful of seed.

Carefully add water slowly because you certainly don’t want it to be sloppy, and while adding the water, mix it all together until you get a consistency that you can form into truffle-sized balls (a little like ping-pong balls) on the baking tray. Lay them out to bake dry on a sunny windowsill for at least three hours.

Voilà! your seed bombs will dry and you can use them to beautify your own garden, that open area across the road, or the traffic circle.