Fukuoka seed ball application to mowed grassy plot

Hello all!

We have recently completed construction of 5 swales that divide a 3/4 acre plot into 5 soon to be garden/chicken paddock spaces. We are trying to seed the interswale paddock/garden spaces which are now predominantly grass, dandelion, thistle, plantain etc , with competitive ruderals before attempting to plant conventional produce crops to enrich topsoil and diversify the grass monoculture. The specific plants we would like to introduce in polyculture to these spaces include Amaranth, Bitter Dock, Purslane , Mallow, Mustard, Clover and Chickweed. Rather than tilling the grassy swathes we would much prefer to implement Fukuokas method of incorporating powdered clay with compost and seeds to form seed balls which can be scattered and lightly mulched with straw. This is our first time attempting to sow anything with seed balls directly over a predominantly grass monoculture. Has anyone else attempted or succeeded in doing this? If so, we would love to hear any advice or suggestions you might have for successful germination.
In terms of seed ball composition, we are using a 1/1 ratio of clay dust (that we have abundant supplies of from a local potter) and dried compost dust. Does anyone have advice on ratios of clay to compost for this kind of application in our Zone 5A area? We are generally able to produce our own reasonably good quality compost of kitchen scrapes and bark chips from our local saw mill but it is sometimes hard to dry and reduce to a fine dust that mixes evenly with our clay dust. We can purchase store bought manure compost which is a much finer consistency. Does anyone have any advice on types of compost that might work best for this application?

Thanks very much!

I think it's a great idea, and your seed ball mix looks like a good one, but be ready for a low rate of establishment. Not because of poor germination, but because incumbent grass is such a hard environment for other plants to infiltrate. The more you do ahead of seedbombing to knock back the grass, the better success your seedlings will have. Mowing as low as possible is a good first step, and so is mulching. If you can mix a lot of greens into the mulch layer, including the grass clippings you took off, that will give the young plants a nitrogen boost and get them a leg up on any re-emergent grass.

Keep us updated on the progress. I love seeing these projects because we do similar things here and it's always good to compare.

Thank you so much for the reply Phil! Good to know we are on the right track in terms of polyculture selection.

Another general question for everyone who may have experience with seed balls would be: Approximately what ratio by weight or volume is ideal to use for clay balls and nutrient substrate (in our case we are probably going to use store bought composted manure)? We attempted this same process last year with our own composted kitchen scraps but found that it was difficult to dry the compost adequately enough to form a fine powder that could be distributed evenly over a bed of clay dust and, until we design a system for properly drying our own compost substrate, we will use a more homogonous store bought product. In general, has anyone discovered an ideal range of overall size for seed balls? We experimented with a seed ball polyculture last spring for conventional garden crops and experienced overwhelming success in some beds and poor success in others. Failure of seedballs last year may have been due to abundance of grass seed that may have come from straw mulch...at least this is our  best guess so far.

We are very much interested in developing a standard approach to broadscale seedball based establishment of polycultures in grass monoculture regions for our area. Our soils are partially clay rich and easily waterlogged or thin and easily eroded layers over shale bedrock in upland regions. At present we are focusing on the lowland, clay rich and easily waterlogged sites. Our initial approach was to apply approximately a 1:1 ratio of clay to compost dust as a seedball substrate scattered over freshly mown field and topped with resulting grass mulch as well as mulch from adjacent plantings such as sorghum and comfrey. As always, any thoughts or suggestions are welcome! Thank you!