Seedball machines

It's been some time that I think a seedball machine will save me a huge lot of work.

In searching for suitable , simple ways of making one I hit on "Star Rollers"
they are used by pyrotech guys. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKPzzIw0ZgU
a kid made this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Eob-nAFW9w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88XUxuv2c84&NR=1
I could make one with a handcrank using some materials I already have.
If a small group got together one could make a lot of seedballs.
I could sow Veg "wild" to resemble Fukuoka's or Sepp's
also sow cover crops, leguminous seeds after cutting the cover crops.
It would have a lot of use. One could make enough balls to seed an acre in a day !!
Theres even videos of "tyre star roller" - a bit more complex

Careful,

I've had seed balls stuck out in the paddocks for a few years, completely sealed off from the rain and still in tact

Kind of defeats the purpose

Make sure your area has a climate like Japan and I will still need to play around with formulation to get a coating that easily disintegrates in rain but holds up in dry land weather.

Cheers,
PeterD

Good tip Peter
- a bit of sand and some compost with Clay.
the clay I made was extracted by stirring soil with a lot of water then
let it settle and skim the top.
It still had some grit.
Germination was ok in handmade balls.
Right now more excited at the prospect of buckets ful of seedballs

im assuming the stars they are talking about are some sort of firework.

anyways, i like the idea. i think someone could easily seed more than an acre in a day if you made the seed balls in advance.

ill have to see if i have the stuff laying around to make one.

may be if seed balls stay intact fo ryears they need to be made with a different recipe to put in more sand and less clay maybe. It is prehaps like growing plants not as straightforward as you hpe it is. 

      The first ability you need to have is to get good at collecting seeds or earning money to buy them. In one of the sepp holzer videos there are shots of him collecting seed.

      The easiest way to make seed balls is the spanish traditional way take your sheep through pastures going to seed and on the way home take them through the lands you want seeded and let them drop their own seed balls. Deer can have up to nearly a thousand cistus seeds in their droppings if they eat cystus seed pods when they are ripe instead of before they are ripe. agri rose macaskie.

Hey Jen0454, I got into making seedballs over the last few years and have made quite a few seed ball machines, after selling a few I decided to go into making them as a simple kit, using a 5 gallon bucket. I sell the stand which is 1/4 in steel with 2 wheel bearings and uses your own electric drill to power it.

I've got a website; seedballsupply.com but have yet to get anything up there yet, we just had a baby girl and she's keeping me real busy.  I'm hoping to sell the kits for $25, all you supply is a drill, pretty easy to use.

I'll get a picture uploaded soon so you can see, the couple I've sold so far were to some groups of people who are sharing them. I even made a 55 gallon version which can do 1000's of seedballs very fast.

I've got my own supply of good red clay and plan on selling premade seedballs in bulk emphasizing on vegetable/food type seeds and companion planting varieties.

Mxit - that sounds really good that you can do it for 25 bucks.
I'm sure I have everything to make one already.
I would like to sow clover into grass and will not till at all -
so seedballs seem the answer.
The others I like to put into certain areas are Sunnhemp and Buckwheat as covers
as well as different peas. I've also been considering Daikon.
With my first experiment with handmade balls I waited until
it looked like a good rain was coming before sowing.
If no rain I could set up a sprinkler in late afternoon.
It would be great to have some input on types of seeds suited to this and especially some mixes used by Fukuoka.
Fast germinating , covers, grasses, wildflowers and herbs, hardy veg etc.

Hey mxitman,

Were those like the youtube videos of using castor wheels upside down so the barrel can roll on it, then some sort of electric motor and belt drive?

I like the idea of a kit, but your a little out of the way from my local

Cheers,
PeterD

seedballsupply.com doesn't work for me...

Mxit - look forward to see when you put some Seedball machine kits up on your website...