Wednesday, July 7, 2010

SeedBallz® - A Review


One of the things I love about attending home and garden shows and flower shows is the opportunity to see new products and to speak with the manufacturers and distributors of those products.  In March, when I attended the Chicago Flower and Garden Show, I came upon a vendor who was selling a product that uses a unique way of sowing seeds.

SeedBallz® is an Oregon-based company that has revived an old method of sowing seeds by embedding them in balls made of clay and soil humus.  Native Americans were known to wrap their corn seeds in clay to keep them from being eaten by birds.



Each SeedBallz® contains numerous seeds.  Simply place the ball on the surface of the soil, whether on the ground or in a container, keep it moist, and the seeds contained inside will germinate and grow in clusters.  Don't bury the balls.

I had an area where I'd planted poppy seeds earlier this spring that didn't really amount to much, so I decided to use the packet that I'd been given in Chicago for that space.  My packet was called "Twilight" and contains a mixture of the following white-blooming flowers:

  • Ammi majus
  • Ammobium alatum
  • Calendula officinalis
  • Callistephus chinensis
  • Carthamus
  • Centaurea
  • Chrysanthemum
  • Cosmos bipinnatus
  • Delphinium
  • Eschscholzia californica
  • Gypsophila elegans
  • Iberis amara
  • Lavatera trimestris
  • Lobularia
  • Reseda alba
  • Nigella damascena
  • Salvia horminum
  • Sapponaria vaccinia

My biggest challenge as we enter the typically dry part of our summer will be to keep the balls moist until they've germinated. But they're in a location that's easier to keep watered than most, so we'll see how they do.

SeedBallz® are hand-rolled in the USA by people with developmental disabilities and sell for $6.95 for each packet.  There are currently 140 employees. You can buy SeedBallz® online and in various retail locations throughout the country.



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The product or merchandise being reviewed in this blog post was the sole compensation for testing and reviewing the product. All opinions expressed here are mine, with no suggestions whatsoever by the manufacturer or distributor. If I like it, I'll say so. If I don't, I'll say that, too.

    5 comments:

    Darla said...

    how interesting..

    Unknown said...

    I wonder if you could use these as guerrilla gardening grenades, assuming you knew that you would have a week or whatever of good rain? It will be interesting to see what happens--can't wait for the updates!

    Tracy said...

    Hi,
    I have seen similar homemade versions of this idea in Australia to help revegetate areas with native plants.
    Tracy

    teresa said...

    That looks like a very good way to plant seeds, really. I will be curious to see how they do for you.

    Rob said...

    We planted some of the Basil SeedBallz. Worked out awesome! We keep it in our kitchen so now we always have basil on hand :)

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