DIY: Flower Bombs
We believe that sustainability starts in your own backyard.
From the start, we hand-harvest all of our raw wildflower honey from our beehives nestled in the East Bay. Living in harmony with Mother Earth, we take great care to nurture a healthy environment for our family of bees and the life web at large! It’s a wondrous cycle of reciprocity and abundance that starts with happy bees, happy plants, and a happy planet. 🌎
Seed balls, or clay dumplings, are an ancient technique for propagating plants from seed through ‘no-till agriculture’ with minimal disturbance to the soil. Rediscovered by Japanese farmer and philosopher Masunobu Fukuoka (1913-2008), a pioneer who developed the methodology of ‘natural farming’ – calling for a return to nature and a more subtractive process compared to the exploitative practices of conventional farming to ultimately feed the world.
In his text ‘The One-Straw Revolution’, Fukuoka looked to nature as a source of inspiration for his own humanity, spirituality, and practice fusing principles from Zen Buddhism to articulate the healing powers of natural farming in combating the growing sense of alienation and disenchantment in modern society.
In form, seed balls are simple to make and there’s a handful of ways to go about making one with varying degrees of speed and precision. Oftentimes, the simplest of solutions are the most elegant, so we’re sharing a DIY guide on making your very own flower bomb at home.
❀ THE POTLI METHOD ❀
Ingredients
- Clay (Preferably iron-rich, red volcanic clay)
- Healthy soil (Mixture of compost, worm castings, or nutrient rich ground soil)
- Assortment of annual and perennial wildflowers
- Optional: Natural fibers like hemp to give the ball more structural integrity
🥟 MASANOBU’S 'CLAY DUMPLING' RECIPE 🥟
His golden ratio is 5 parts dry powdered clay, 3 parts fine-sifted compost, and 1 part seed mix. Moisten and combine all organic inputs (sifted clay particles, seeds, and soil mixture).Start rolling the ingredients in a flat bottomed pan to “cake-up” into rounded, compact lumps to dry before casting into fields.
MAKE YOUR OWN WILDFLOWER MIX
|
Common Name |
Botanical Name |
Type |
Origin |
Bloom Period |
|
Blue-eyed Grass |
Sisyrinchium bellum |
Perennial |
Native |
Spring |
|
Globe Gilia |
Gilia captitata |
Annual |
Native |
Spring |
|
Bird’s Eye |
Gilia tricolor |
Annual |
Native |
Spring |
|
Golden Lupine |
Lupinus densiflorus |
Annual |
Native |
Spring - Summer |
|
Arroyo Lupine |
Lupinus succulentus |
Annual |
Native |
Spring - Summer |
|
Five-spot |
Nemophila maculata |
Annual |
Native |
Spring - Summer |
|
California Poppy |
Eschescholzia californica |
Annual |
Native |
Spring - Summer |
|
Chinese Houses |
Collinsia heterophylla |
Annual |
Native |
Spring - Summer |
|
Farewell-to-Spring |
Clarkia amoena |
Annual |
Native |
Spring - Summer |
|
White Yarrow |
Achillea millefolium |
Perennial |
Native |
Spring - Summer |
|
California Blue Bells |
Phacela campanularia |
Annual |
Native |
Spring - Summer |
|
Tidy Tips |
Layia platyglossa |
Annual |
Native |
Summer |
Process
1. Prepare your soil mixture in a bowl. Inoculating the soil mixture with native forest soil or commercial mycorrhizae can provide a diverse network of fungi beneficial to healthy root development.
2. Moisten clay and flatten into a base structure.
3. Add soil into the center with 3-5 seeds into each 2” ball.
4. Secure edges and hand-roll softly into a ball.
5. Coat the seed ball with more soil and leave to air-dry.
6. Chuck flower bombs into fields, slopes, or meadows.
How-To Guide