Seed Bomb
Recipe
• 3 parts clay – Dry low fire red clay or fine all natural unused kitty litter • 2 parts organic potting soil • 1 part seed • Water • Mixing bowl • Cookie sheet • Wax paper 1. Line cookie sheet with wax paper. 2. Mix seeds and potting soil together. 3. Add clay or kitty litter and mix again. 4. Slowly add water, mixing into a well-blended paste. 5. Stop mixing when you are able to form a ball that holds together. 6. For into 1-inch balls and place on cookie sheet. 7. Allow bombs to dry for 1-2 days. They dry faster in the sun. 8. Bomb the area of your choice! Do not plant.
Mud pies with a purpose BY ANITA MILLER
with good drainage into a wildflower meadow that will Nothing feels quite like bloom year after year with squishy mud when you close little additional care or worry. your fist around it. It tries to The process is simple and escape between your fingers starts with commercialand finds a seemingly perma- ly-available mixes of perennial nent home under your nails. wildflower seeds native to Making mud pies is just a Texas. For her demonstration, childhood memory for many. Blankenship used one sold by However, those same skills can Bayer. To that add purchased actually help turn a forlorn soil. “You don’t want to use piece of bare earth into a wild- soil from your house because flower garden. it can have weeds in it. Buy Seed balls – concoctions a premium soil,” she recomof seeds, soil, water and a mends. Next, she adds a little binding agent like clay or kitty water and finally, a binding litter – can pull off a landagent. Though the recipe calls scaping miracle, explained for low fire red clay, that can County Extension Agent Kate be hard to find. Kitty litter is a Blankenship, whose specialty good and available substitute, in the county’s Agrilife Office but Blankenship warns to is home skills. A dozen or so choose an “all natural” variety “balls” tossed out in October without chemicals added for can transform a sunny area odor control or other purpos14 | Hays County Echo | Fall 2020
es. “Keep working it,” she says, “until it sticks together.” Ideally, the balls will be about an inch in diameter but perfection is not the goal. Put them on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper and let them dry – ideally, for a day or two. “Then when they are dry you can toss them out into the field.” For an area about the size of a classroom blackboard, she recommends 10 to 12 seed balls as evenly spaced as you can throw them. “In a few years you will have a meadow for the bees, birds and butterflies that’s really pretty.” The advantages of putting seeds in a ball are many. “If you just threw seeds like this in your back yard they would just blow away,” she cautions. “Within the ball, the seeds are protected from birds,
sun and wind.” When spring rolls around the seeds will sprout and burst open the ball. Because the wildflowers are perennial, they will reseed themselves year after year.
