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Designing seed and compost planters

 
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Location: Montreal, Canada
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I am a big fan of Seedballs for planting all kind of plants. I especially like the fact that they can incorporate mushroom spores and mycelium as well as clay in their mix. They inoculate the soil with a mix of beneficial microorganisms that will help building fertility. The problem with Seedballs is that this seeding technique often fails. This is why I started a project at Ogfor.com to design "Open Source" planter prototypes to plant mix of seeds, clay and compost enriched with mushroom spores and mycelium, mycorrhizae... in forest conditions, where the soil is not worked. These designs could also be used to plant Seedballs but there is no need to makes them, just using Seedball mix is enough.
There is a lot of testing that is needed for these planters. Presently here in Quebec the soil is frozen solid.
I would also like to learn more about Seedballs mixes that works, do you have any recipes?



 
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I've had the pleasure of meeting Sylvain and testing his prototype tool. You can read my review. http://www.ogfor.com/viewtopic.php?f=107&t=809
He's getting some minor production going, If lots of people are interested the price can come down.
 
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Slowly but surely new planters are built. I was quite busy searching for a new job, quite happy to now work in a vineyard. I planted a lot of lentil seeds in my backyard and front yard because I have to plant only cheap seeds as my roommate has a golden retriever breeding business and the dogs are quite destructive of any green stuff. So the planter is used mostly for green manure experiments and I am beginning to like them more and more. These tools could be used for greening places with very hard soil like old mine sites or industrial sites. From the "immense" success of this post I have to think that a planter like that is not really needed by permaculturists and that it would be more adapted to farmers. Anyway this tool can be made with ordinary electrical tubing and some stainless steel sheet. If someone wants to make one I can post precise photo here if needed, tell me. I am really persuaded that no-till planting tools (not just mine) could be the start of a new revolution in the way we grow our food and medicine, and that we could use wild plants for that to restore the biodiversity of a lot of forests...

Here is a photo kindly taken by Kota Dubois when he came to take the planter he generously bought from me:

gift
 
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