S is for seed bombs

 

A few weeks ago, I posted an interview with Janna Willoughby-Lohr about the paper flowers that her papermaking business, Papercraft Miracles, has been creating. Today, I am sharing the rest of the interview, which is about the seed bombs that Papercraft Miracles produces. Recently, Papercraft Miracles produced half a million seed bombs for Lowes, which has been distributing them every Thursday as part of their free Garden to Go kits.

How did you get your start in making seed bombs?

I started making seed paper first. The first batch of seed paper that I made was for our wedding invitations in 2011. Actually 2010, because we mailed them out in 2011. I thought that it would be fun to grow flowers in our wedding colors so we had marigolds and forget me nots (blue and orange).

A couple of years after that, I had a friend share a post with me on Facebook that she had seen in a kind of Pinterest tutorial. She said, “Hey, I bet you could make these!” And so, after seeing that post, I was like I know that I could make ones like that, but I bet that I could make cooler ones than that. 

The early seed bombs

Initially, I started making them, using muffin tins. The mini muffin tins were little seed bombs and the bigger muffin tins were bigger ones. I was actually placing dried hydrangea petals on the top, and they were really cute. But they weren’t in fun shapes because they were just in these muffin tins. They took a really long time to dry because I hadn’t figured out how to get them out of the muffin tins. 

The first couple of batches I made sprouted before they were dry. It took forever. 

Or I was trying to get them out of the muffin tin, and they would fall apart. So there was a lot of trial and error and figuring out what worked best. Once I started using different kinds of molds and cookie cutters and things like that, I figured out how to make them in just about any shape. Which types of molds worked better for certain shapes and which shapes were not going to happen, no matter what we did.

We spent some time perfecting the art of making high-end, luxury, very cute seed bombs. 

Most people who make seed bombs just make little balls. We do make those when we are asked to make them. Most of the time, our seed bombs are in cute shapes. Different colors… we add different colors of pulp to kind of draw on them. I guess that they are luxury seed bombs. At first, I made them all with different mixes of flowers. All of our seed bombs are made with a pollinator garden mixture. Then I started making some with herbs in them so you could have a little herb garden. Then we started making some with veggie seeds so you could have a little vegetable garden. It just took off from there.

 

There are definitely high end seed bombs. They are shaped like a buffalo with a heart in the middle. We made little ice creams and they are two colors. There are a lot of good pictures on our website of those, too. We made owls and it has gold pulp for the petals. We make Star Wars ones. We just finished making the Earth Day ones. They are really cute.

 The seed bomb mixture is...

...bishops flower, black eyed susans, butterfly milkweed, California poppies, cornflower, dwarf cosmos,  Indian blanket, coreopsis, New England aster, perennial lupine, purple cone flower, purple topped verbena, daisy, Siberian wall flower, alyssum, and sweet William pink. They are native to North America and are things that would grow well in all of the growing zones. There are some annuals and some perennials. There are things that bloom throughout the season. You plant them now for this year, and the annuals will come up throughout the season. The perennials will get their roots established and then, next year, all of the perennials will come back and they will bloom. It’s nice because it gives you this continuous garden.

 How do you get seed bombs to grow?

For the smaller seed bombs, I just dip them in water and put them under the soil. If you want to squeeze them a little bit and break them up and spread them out, you can do that. You don’t have to. More of the seeds will probably survive and thrive if you spread them out a little. For the bigger ones, like the buffaloes, I recommend that you get them wet and break them into pieces. If you’re planting in a pot, you want maybe one to one and a half inches of seed bomb for a one foot pot. 

Once they start sprouting, if there are too many sprouts too close to one another, thin them out a little bit. You plant them, keep the soil moist until they are established, which is about four to six weeks, and then just water normally. They want to be in a sunny spot. Most of them need a good six to eight hours of sun a day. They grow easily. 

We’ve been selling them for years. I’ve never had anyone write us or call us and say that they didn’t grow. But people send us pictures of the flowers all of the time. They’re really easy to grow. My kids shoved them into flower pots a couple of years ago in the winter. I asked, what’s growing in here? Bachelor’s buttons blooming inside the house all winter long. If a toddler can do it by accident, I’m sure that anyone can do it. I gave them Easter seed bombs and they didn’t plant them and then it was the end of that year. They were sitting around for six months after I gave it to them. They shoved them into the planters. They didn’t take time to water them or anything. The plants got watered normally, and they just started to grow.

If you're interesting in buying some seed bombs for yourself or for a gift, check out the Papercraft Miracles website. Even if you're not looking to buy seed bombs, check out the website. It is beautiful, and it offers so many cool ideas to enhance your life with paper!