I call it guerilla landscaping & mine is planting bulbs in roadside places so there will be color in spring. At boring office parks. Squills, crocus etc.

Planted loads of them at the college my daughter went to, so she would see them in spring on the paths she walked along. And for the other kids as well, of course.

I bought a bunch of butterly-and-caterpillar friendly native wildflower seeds and am planning to go out with my daughter in a week or 2 right before its supposed to rain hard and strew them around some open spaces in our town. Does that qualify me as a guerilla gardener? I hope so :) This is the first time I've tried it and I'm not sure what is the best technique ... I'm just winging it! Do you wrap seeds up in wet dirt kind of like meatballs to make your little bombs, or is it more complicated than that?
Lisa

Juliet That does mean that you are a guerilla gardener!

I am playing around with the seed bombs but here is my recipe as of right now these work well, they may take a little time to germinate and are best sowed in the fall through really early spring to give them some time to biodegrade, these are not your every day seed balls, but I couldn't find clay in this area affordably so I had to do some creative thinking.

The first thing I do is make some compost tea, just a hand full of nice compost in a bucket with water, a little agricultural grade molasses, and some more complex carbs, like some rice, add in a nice air stone and bubble away for 24-72 hours, (the complex carbs give them something to eat if over two days, I tend to be lazy when it comes to doing these..... anyway...

once the tea is done I gather my other materials... sunflower seeds are what I used last year, and the most affordable way to get these are as bird food. you need about half a cup , I also get wildflower seeds at wal-mart for $1 that is enough for 100 square feet (100 balls) If you go this rout they don't need the compost or coffee grounds mentioned later because there is inert material in the wildflower mix

Two rolls of toilet paper, single ply, 1,000 sheets super cheep.

2-6 heaping tablespoons of flour, depending on the mix, seed used, and the atmosphere...

unwrap the TP if it is wrapped up and set in a large bucket, add a little compost tea in just until it is soggy, then wait about 15 minutes and make sure it is fully absorbed, then break it up with your hands, and remove the inner cardboard roll, if you are using 100% seed, like sunflower add some compost or, my favorite (for the smell and color) used coffee grounds. Make sure this is no more then 1/4 of the mixture, and the mixture is the constancy of cookie dough, any wetter, and it will germinate the seeds before it is dry, if it is to wet, then squeeze some of the water out. This is the time you want to add the flour to make it even more thick, more like straight slightly moist clay, and depending on the weather, and how much water is in the mix this could be between 2 and 6 tablespoons. The bigger the seed, the thicker it should be with the flour to keep it intact.

After the mixture is the correct constancy and you are ready to make the balls, kneed the seeds into the mixture, and then immediately start rolling balls between the size of dimes and nickels, with pennies being the 'best' size, and throw them on a screen or what I use, air filters that you get at home depot for your heater/ac systems, they are under a dollar each, and three is usually enough per 'batch' and are reusable

put a fan on them or put them out in the sun for a few days to dry them to there core, then store in a paper bag in a cool dry place until you need them... this seems labor intensive but from start to finish it takes around an hour once you have it down, and one 'batch' makes around 100 balls. If you have squirrels I suggest you add some cayenne powder to deter them.

It is really worth it as well especially in a situation where there will not be much, if any maintenance because it protects the seeds from the birds, keeps them dry until there is enough moisture to sustain the young seedlings, and it will keep the bio-diversity of the beneficial bacteria in the compost tea in suspended animation until everything is most ideal for everything to 'happen' Its really a neat little way to plant, and it works, I noticed a lot of random sunflowers from the ones I planted last year. Hopefully some seeds from the ones I planted this year will grow alongside the purple majesty millet that are the feature of this year's seed bombs.

;)

Wow, you're inspiring! You're got a great system going. Maybe next year we'll make some bombs of our own following your recipe. This year we're short on time. We may be feeding the birds as much as anything - but who knows, maybe the birds will end up planting some seeds in their droppings. When I was jogging this morning I noticed some bare spots along the edges of nearby open space that the township must have recently cleared, so there is open mud - a nice home for some seeds :)
Lisa

p.s. This is what I'm planting this year: Echinacea, butterfly weed, milk weed, rudbeckia subtomentosa (sweet black-eyed susan), joe pye weed, helianthus laetiflorus (showy sunflower). I researched & tried to pick natives & avoid invasives. Bought the seeds from Prairie Moon Nursery. If I have some success this year I'll buy more next year!!

I used to do that back around the turn of the century but I've stopped doing it. There was a RailRoad next to my house and I spread a box of wildflower seeds down the gully next to the tracks. I noticed that somebody dumped antifreeze down the gully and I just shook my head. So I spread the seeds and went in and took a nap. When I woke up I saw that there were about 5-6 cop cars and about 50 people standing around the railroad tracks looking at the gully. So I went up to one of the cops and asked what was going on. He said that someone may have tried to use biological warfare on the area. He said there was green stuff in the water and an off white powder spread throughout the gully area. I just shook my head, again, and told him that the white powder was the wildflower seeds I planted. I showed him the box. The green stuff was probably car antifreeze. The cop really looked relieved. Of course this was a couple weeks after 9-11-01. One of my neighbors called the cops on me. Mind you I'm always outside and I've lived there for 30 years.