Seed Bombs - Sort of a Tutorial

Today, Bug and I made seed bombs.  I think.

We've been talking about doing it for awhile,  I read a whole bunch of tutorials, then ran out and picked up the things we were missing (just the clay, really).  But I didn't look at any of the tutorials again, so I kind of feel like I left something out.  It was really super easy, and really super fun, and something that the four year old had a whole lot of fun with, too.

If you want to trust it, I'll set this up a bit like a tutorial.  And I'll update once I see how they work out in the world!

(A few real tutorials can be found here, here, and here, if you want to double-check or get a second opinion.)

Here's what Bug and I did...

We gathered:

Compost.  There was a little bit of mulch left in the awesome spinning composter that my sister gave us.  Before I realized that I had picked up a small bag of potting soil, but I'm fairly certain that this project would not have been as successful with regular potting soil.

 We ended up breaking up the larger chunks in our compost, which was really dry, and spreading it onto a work-surface plate to make it easier to handle.  I'd imagine that moister compost would be much easier to work with.

Clay.  As you can see in the first picture, we went with the Crayola air-dry clay.  It was the only brand that I could find and it was labeled as "natural".  I'd have preferred to *know* that it's natural, but since we chose flower seeds and not vegetable seeds, I didn't figure it was *quite* as important.

Seeds.  Make sure that you pick a native and non-invasive species.  We went with a selection of poppies.

Water.  I totally forgot about the water.  Which would have made this whole process SO much easier.  My only excuse is that I was trying to get everything set up as quickly as possible after Boo went down for her nap so that Bug and I could actually get the seed bombs made. 

So, how we did it...

We picked a little bit of the clay and rolled it into a ball...

Then put a depression into the ball (because mashing them into flat circles on the plate made them next to impossible to pick up again - wax paper might have been an better idea) and dropped a few seeds and a little bit of compost into the middle of the ball before rolling it back up again.

Then we rolled the whole thing in the compost, to coat the outside.  In all honesty, I'd hoped for better coverage on the outside.  Pretty sure that forgotten little bit of water would have helped a ton with that.

 Then we set them aside.  In a day or so, they should be dried enough to toss out into the world.

Bug had SO much fun rolling the balls and putting the seeds inside.  He could have cared less about the compost - which was funny considering how excited he is about the compost in general - so he left some of his uncoated.  And then he just started mashing things together and playing with the clay, which was cool.  He sprinkled some chia seeds on his artwork, too.

 Please ignore the mayhem in the background. Our cabinets are in desperate need of a coat of paint and I really should have mopped...but it seemed like a silly thing to do just before we made a big mess with seeds and clay.

This is where we ended with the seed bombs today.

Bug's ready to make more NOW.

If anybody's made seed bombs, or tries some after reading this, I'd love to hear about it!

First Sunflowers

Yesterday, the kids and I went out and discovered that Bug's sunflower had bloomed.  It's not very tall, but is quite pretty.  And it looks like there are seven other blooms getting ready!  Seven!

It was also pretty exciting to see that the tomato plant is still alive and has bloomed.  Again.  It's not getting enough water, or is getting too much sun - I'm not really certain which - and keeps blooming and wilting without actually producing any tomatoes.  A little disappointing, but at this point I'm really just kind of thrilled that it's love at all.  If it bears fruit, that will be a huge bonus.

Really, our outside time yesterday was all kinds of exciting.  I finally remembered to buy birdseed, and Bug and Boo were all kinds of excited to fill up the feeder and sprinkle as much seed on the ground as we'd let them. 

My sister moved into a cool new house awhile back and had set aside some stuff at her old house that she thought we might be able to use.  And since my step-dad came back from Texas with a trailer, we were able to haul over a new refrigerator (Mom's old one, since my step-dad brought a newer one from their place in Texas for their house), some shelves that have already gone up in the studio and more for the garage, a spinning composter and an ancient lawnmower.  You know, the kind with no motor.

For the first time in my life, I mowed my own lawn.  And it was exhilarating.  I'm not naive enough to think that I'm always going to have fun with that, especially as it continues to get hotter and hotter here in the desert, but I certainly felt accomplished yesterday.

Then we got the composter set in place.  Bug and I pulled out some of the mulch that was left in it for a project we have planned, then dumped our first big bowl of compostable stuff inside.  Bug is so excited about it that he's decided that it's his job to spin the composter.  He even walked away from Phinias & Ferb this afternoon to go spin it when he saw me carry a bowl of scraps outside.

Add to things that Richard has been cooking with fire and we've been living in suburban pseduo-homesteader heaven for the past few days. :)