Make 4 lbs of seed balls - PEP BB foraging.sand.seedball

I made a bunch of seed balls this summer. I mixed clay, horse manure, a little water, and the following glorious seeds:

Vetch
Black Locust (perennial)
Hazelnut (perennial)
Mustard
Annual Rye Grass
Alfalfa
Echinacia (perennial)
Yellow Fritillary
Dock (perennial)
Mint (perennial)
Calendula
Chamomille

There are a couple other perennials on the list, but I'm not sure if they would be in the Montana climate. There are also some nitrogen fixers on the list as well.

Seed balls! I’m wanting to plant wheat, clover, and daikon tomorrow and was researching how to do it. I had this BB in the back of my head and decided to try it with seed balls. I had to come up with three other seed types (and then later two more just because I was so far below the 1/3 seeds recommended in the video up top.

So, my mix includes:
- My working wheat grex (half I grew and half boughten)
- Dutch white clover (boughten)
- daikon  (boughten)
- potato onions (unknown origin seeds from my cross-breeding program)
- mixed liatris  (saved from wild flowers)
- spiderwort  (saved from wild flowers)

- coriander (a handful from my working grex)
- lettuce (a wad of unwinnowed seed-matter from this year’s main crop)

So for my seed ball adventure, there are a lot of notes here. I didn't have native clay, so I had to order a 5 pound bag from amazon.  I used about 3 pounds in the making of these seed balls (I made a ton). I also picked up some organic compost from the local store. I had a wide variety of seeds, which made this extremely fun. Colorado has a ton of natural wild flowers so it was cool to be able to add them to the mix and help spread them to deforested areas.

I will include these notes in the captions for pictures but I want to explain my weight scale as best as I can. From the pictures you can see my scale is always 5 pounds off (The scale reads 5 pounds now). I added my bucket, which when empty, added about a pound (Meaning it reads 6 pounds now). So zero'd out we are starting at 1 pound. I added my seed balls to the bucket which brought the total weight to right about 14 pounds, around 14.6 if I had to guess.

I apologize for the story, but it was the only scale I had and I knew I could make this work. I also made some hefty seed balls haha, I started off huge then tried to scale them down to get more out of the mix.

The list of the seeds I used are as follows:
-Wild garlic
-Native Coloradan Sunflower
-Daikon Raddish
-Red delicious apple (grows native here due to people throwing out seeds, so there are hidden apple orchards all over CO)
-Dandelion
-Alfalfa
-Crimson clover
-White clover
-common vetch
-lentil
-millet
-cowpea
-buckwheat
-flax
-sweet clover
-red clover
-Black mulberry

I made seed bombs with the following seeds:

- sunflower
- lambsquarters
- renga renga lily (perennial)
- clover (perennial)
- nettle (perennial)
- manuka (perennial)
- magenta spreen

Looks like my 4 pound batch did not contain the perennials required which I added that my 20 pound batch did. Unsubmitting...

Here are my 4 lbs of seed balls.

In them are apple, cherry, sainfoin, golden and crimson clovers, vetch, orchard grass, lambs quarters, and winter rye.

The perennials are

Sainfoin
Orchard grass
Cherry
Apple

In the description of the requirements for this BB, does "- possible species:" mean that the 6 species of seeds must be ones that are listed in that list, or is that list just a list of examples and other species qualify for the 6?

I'm working on this one right now, but wanted to double check that "possible" plant type seed list are suggestions?   Not that it has to be seeds/plants from that specific list?  

My list of 6 at the moment is:   honey locust,  pawpaw, sochan(rudbeckia), coneflower(echinacea),  wild mullein, and claytonia (miner's lettuce).  
Am I OK to proceed?

( I see this was also asked by the previous poster as well.. )  

R Parian wrote:In the description of the requirements for this BB, does "- possible species:" mean that the 6 species of seeds must be ones that are listed in that list, or is that list just a list of examples and other species qualify for the 6?

Heather Staas wrote:I'm working on this one right now, but wanted to double check that "possible" plant type seed list are suggestions?   Not that it has to be seeds/plants from that specific list?  

My list of 6 at the moment is:   honey locust,  pawpaw, sochan(rudbeckia), coneflower(echinacea),  wild mullein, and claytonia (miner's lettuce).  
Am I OK to proceed?

( I see this was also asked by the previous poster as well.. )  

Yes, the "possible species" lists are not your only options. It would be helpful for the certifiers if you'll make note of which seeds that you're using are perennials, especially if they're not on the list of suggestions.

To document your completion of the BB, provide the following:
- A picture of the seeds in your mixing container
- The balls/bombs being created
- A picture of the finished balls on a scale showing the weight
- A listing of the seeds you used

Way more fun than I expected.   I may have gotten a little carried away with over 6lbs made, and too many photos LOL.  

I took my dog out for the afternoon and found lots of  "edge" areas to distrubute about a third of them.  The rest are drying in my greenhouse today.

SEED LIST:  
pawpaw  (native, tree/perennial)
honey locust (nitrogen-fixing,  tree/perennial)
sochan (native, rudbeckia,  perennial)
coneflower ( echinacea, perennial)
yellow mullein (wild collected, biennial)
miner's lettuce (claytonia, native,  self-seeding annual)