Have you ever seen a spot in your garden, neighborhood, empty lot that you thought, oh my god, that is one fugly space? If so, Wildflower Seed Bombs might be the answer to your problems. A mixture of clay, dirt and wildflower seeds, these little gems can be tossed into areas that need a little pick-me-up, indiscriminately, if you must. I say, when you can share a little wildflower beauty, spread that shit around.

This Drunken Crafting project takes place on the deck of my sister, Joy, who lives in a development that once was a cornfield. This means, there are not a lot of trees and the wind can be hellacious. The brew du jour is Madtown Nut Brown, from Ale Asylum in Madison Wisconsin and, a beloved nut brown ale. This is a tasty, nutty brown ale (which are sorely underrated in the world of beers) and has a back sweetness like a yummy caramel. Malty and delicious with just a touch of hoppiness – this is a beer that I can drink any time of the year, it’s that damn good.

Oh, yeah, but, let’s get on to the crafting part of this post. My sister is very methodical and had to compare various projects from Pinterest on making Wildflower Seed Bombs. This was kind of a video bomb that she wasn’t expecting. She was a pretty good sport about it though…so, I let it roll….

The worst part of this recipe was getting the non-toxic clay. You can pick up some different varieties at various crafting stores – we got our from a pottery supply called Continental Clay in Minneapolis, but, you can find Crayola Air Dry Clay online or at local craft stores.

Working the clay was a little difficult at first and we had to add a little water to it to make it more pliable. We ripped it into chunks first before we started mixing in any other ingredients. Starting off with a five pound bag was probably a little more than we should have started with, but, since there was two of us, it went faster than I expected. When the clay was pliable and a little more workable, we decided to add the dirt and then the wildflower seeds. We chose a Burpee Wildflower Seed Mix that is an annual seed, but, attracts both birds and butterflies. The soil was a basic Miracle-Gro garden soil, which as we began mixing them together, and incorporating the seeds, we needed to have a certain amount of water to make them workable. It’s finding that fine balance of not too wet, not too dry. We didn’t want the seeds to get wet and start germinating too quickly! We worked in small sections and ended up creating a bowl of what looked like balled-up turds. But, working in larger sections would not have been as effective. We needed to keep the size small enough to continue to work the clay with the dirt and seeds! Many of the recipes we found suggested that you just make them into round balls and dry them out, but, we didn’t care for that idea. Too “turd-like” we decided, so we opted to roll out the

“dough.”  At a loss for a rolling pin, we struck upon the genius idea of using the beer bottles. Hell yeah. Ingenuity is the mother of invention – it was just about the perfect size and we decided a great way to use natural resources.  Beer, it’s not just for drinking anymore! At first we were trying to roll the clay directly on the paper and it just did not work well, so, we sprinkled a little dirt to help with the process and it went much more smoothly.  After rolling out the dough, we used a variety of cookie cutters – hearts, flowers and stars for the shapes, which we planned to mix up after they were dried and ready to be packaged. Between the two of us, it probably took a good two hours to get through the 5lbs of clay, plus the additional dirt and seeds – and it felt like the clay was already starting to set. If you were doing this project alone, I recommend working with either 2.5lbs or a 1lb at a time. It will make your crafting time far more enjoyable. We placed the cut seed bombs onto cardboard trays to dry for a few days before we packaged – these were going to a craft show in a couple of weeks, so we knew we needed them to be fully dried.

I tossed one of these into my yard when I got home that night and am happy to report, they are working! We finished these just about two weeks ago and they are developing some small green sprouts on the one seed bomb that I planted. (This was a small ball of clay, versus our cookie cutter renditions – hence it looks like a turd.) I’m sort of excited to see exactly what they will produce since it was a mixed package of seeds. I was able to recognize some seeds as sunflower, but that is where my seed recognition stopped.

Wildflower Seed Bombs

Ingredients:

• 5lbs of non-toxic, air drying clay
• 2 cups of garden soil
• 2 cups of wildflower seeds
• water
• Don’t forget beer to drink

Directions:

1. Work the clay to make it more pliable.
2. Then, mix the first three ingredients together, working the soil and seeds into the clay – you will have to work in small batches. Ours were about half the size of a tennis ball.
3. At this point, you can choose to separate the worked clay mixture into small 1″ balls or, you can roll them out to 1/2″ thickness and use a cookie cutter to cut them into shapes.
4. Allow the clay to air dry.
5. Package seed bombs into small bags to give as gifts or just throw them into your pocket for strolls around your neighborhood.
6. Sit back and watch the magic happen.

We hope you enjoyed this project.

Cheers!