Sammy's Blog - What is a Seed Ball?

What is a Seed Ball? By Sammy Holman Autistic CEO - Many people ask me why we bother making thousands and thousands of seed balls, when you can just buy a packet of seeds and throw them in your garden.  

Well you can do that, you can just sow a few seeds and wait.  However, have you ever considered when you buy a packet of rather expensive seeds just how many of them are eaten by the birds, munched by slugs, ants and other insects before the seeds get the opportunity to germinate and sprout! 

This is the reason why we make seeds balls as we create a "Mini Eco-System to protect the precious seed.   Our seed balls are a mix peat free compost, red clay and a mix of Mr Fothergill's wild flower seeds.  We make our mixture in a big seed tray and make a batch of 100-200 balls at a time per person. 

Our seed balls unlike others on the market which are only 10mm in diameter, ours are firm truffle sized balls, providing you with over 100 seeds per ball of the specific mix of wildflowers which attract different insects that our garden wildlife and nature needs. 

When you have made your batch of seed balls they need to dry completely, we have a drying room specific for this job.  It is important the seed balls dry out or they will start to sprout, and you only want they to do that when you are ready for sowing. 

When you are ready, simple soak and throw your balls and where ever they land, let nature take its course, don't break up the balls just leave them sitting on the earth, or in your pots.  Keep watering the seed balls and in a few weeks you will see the little sprouts coming out of the balls as the seeds start to germinate and grow. 

With a combination of sunshine and water you will soon have a meadow of wildflowers.   We make many different varieties of Seed Balls, each one of them does a different job for nature. 

We have seed balls for pollinators, providing a mass of flowers and herbs that the bees just love.  We make seed ball for hedgehogs, which attract the insects that hedgehogs love to eat.  This year we are launching our Butterfly mixes, Poppy mixes for Remembrance and some other interesting varieties which will all make your garden look beautiful and help to continue the garden food chain for various wildlife and insect species. 

Each of our seeds balls is made individually by hand.  The making or our seed balls forms part SEN Work Placement Programme where young people with learning disabilities and autism help us to make the seed balls on our production line which are then shipped to our trade and retail customers.  Our work placement programme provides industry training for one year supporting young adults with concentration therapy, hand eye coordination and team building skills. We work as a team together making batches of the varieties of seed balls.  

Some of our seed balls are made into amazing gift sets last year we launched "Betty Bumble and Friends" and this year we are launching Hattie Hedgehog, Beryl Butterfly and Tommy the Tortoise As well as our seed ball wildflower and herb mixes.

For education purposes and teaching wild gardening and nature recovery to children, seed balls are also a great teaching unit to share in schools and teach your pupils the value of nature and how to grow amazing wildflower meadows in your school ground, enhancing nature rich school grounds for rewilding and nature recovery purposes.  Our seed ball sets are a great GIFT and a great TEACHING TOOL for all Junior schools.