Seedballs: From little things grows big things

You don't always have to go far to get out with your kids. You can have fun in the garden too. We've been making 'seedballs'...

When the evenings get lighter and longer, filled with warm sunshine, you want to get outside in the garden. Now we don’t have a large garden (which we would love), and what we do have is filled with the kid's toys (trampoline, sandpit, etc.), but we like the garden to look reasonably tidy and colourful and usually pot up some plants in containers for summer.

Keen to involve the kids in some gardening, we decided to make our own 'seed balls'.

What Is a Seed Ball?

Seedballs are an organic way to grow plants. Everything the plant needs are packed into these little balls, a mix of seed, clay, peat-free compost, and a little chilli powder.

It's simple, and using nature to protect nature.

The clay dries to create a hard shell for the ball that stops birds or ants from poaching the seeds. However, the clay can absorb rainwater, making the nutrient-rich peat moist and creating an ideal environment for the seeds to germinate.

And the chilli? Well, as the seeds start sprouting from the ball, a little chilli powder should help keep 'pests' away, with no pesticides used.

Getting a Seedball Kit

The seedballs kit arrived in the post from Seedball. You can order kits from them (click here to see Seedball Kits).  

The kids were very excited and intrigued about making their seed balls.

The bags were clearly labelled with their content, and an instruction leaflet was provided.

The making process

The first step was to mix all the ingredients (just like making a cake!!).

As this involves mixing in chilli dust (which is optional), it is recommended that an adult does this.

It was then time to let the kids loose and get them involved!

A little bit of water was added until the mixture resembled the consistency of play dough.

Now you can probably guess what happened here. The kids got a little enthusiastic at this point and added a little too much water.  Not a problem. By adding some more compost to compensate, this was easily sorted out.

Next came the fun part of rolling the balls!

Now kids being kids, they got into a little bit of a mess doing this and even got into the seed ball spirit with a little dance around the table!!!

Drying out the Seedballs

When all the balls had been made, we put them in a tray and left them in a warm location in the house (airing cupboard ) to dry out.

This drying process only took a couple of days.  We then moved them into the garage, where they were cool and dry till we were ready to scatter.

Scattering them when you want is useful, especially with the great British weather.

Scattering the Seedballs

We left the seed balls a couple of weeks before the scattering began!

This bit is easy: no planting, just scattered on the soil.

Now the kids got a little creative and started making faces with them. A little bit of persuasion to scatter them properly and the scattering was complete.

Every day, we popped out to check on them. The kids watered them, waiting for them to sprout.

Even the rabbit was intrigued.

We didn't have to wait long before we saw them sprouting.

Making the seed balls was great fun. The kids enjoyed it and seemed to get a lot out of it.

There’s something special and satisfying about making your seed balls. We are just waiting for them to grow and paint the garden.

Here's a little video we put together.

The plants we're growing are mixed wildflowers—hopefully, something the bees will like.

Disclaimer: Thanks to SeedBalls for sending us the Wild Flower mix to review. All opinions are our own.