🌱 Seeds and Seed Bombs
Seeds As Intellectual Property
Seeds might seem like a non-controversial subject, but it can get very tricky. Let's say you breed some oat varieties together to create a plant that is resistant to a type of blight. Well, now you can claim the plant as your intellectual property, and thus make it illegal for farmers to save the seeds from the crops they grow. If the farmers want to protect their crops from blight, they'll have to buy your seeds every single year. 1 2
As this continues, companies try to increase the production of the crops (for example, bigger than ever strawberries), sometimes at the cost of breeding out nutritional properties and varieties that might have resistance to other risks (for example, a plant having higher resistance to droughts).
There are some efforts to fight this, however. For example, there is the Open Source Seed Initiative and Open Source Seeds which both aim to protect and increase options for seeds that are public domain.
Seed Bombs
Masanobu Fukuoka (1913 – 2008) was a promoter of no-till and natural farming from Japan, and was well known for his work on fighting desertification.
He was a microbiologist and agricultural scientist specializing in plant pathology, and his personal research and writings earned him awards as he traveled the world teaching(including meeting with the United Nations).
Seedball is a mixture of clay and various seeds, that allows the seeds to stay protected inside the ball until it rains, and the conditions become favourable for sprouting.
One aspect he was most known for was his use of seed balls, which was an ancient technique he re-discovered and popularized. The idea is that the seeds are protected, but will become exposed when it rains. As the clay breaks apart, the seeds that are meant to grow will grow.
In 1973, those seed bombs started being used by Liz Christy for guerrilla gardening, and has been used for that since.
DIY Seed Bombs:
- Gather a variety of seeds, and mix them together
- Knead the clay, adding small amounts of water. Kneed well to avoid cracks.
- Mix seeds into a small amount of clay so that the seeds are not exposed and roll into a round shape.
- Throw the seed balls where you want them to grow.