Heather McCargo, founder and promoter of the Wild Seed Project in Maine, has helped me find a fun New Year’s tradition. She suggests planting pots of native seeds during the holiday season when not much else is going on in the garden. I took her up on it today and planted nine pots of natives.
Once I planted the different seeds (eight Seattle-native types), I put snow on top of each pot (we still have 6″ here) and set them on shelves outside to experience the weather they need to germinate next spring.
After those seeds were planted, I poured some excess seeds into one big pile, mixed them up, and scooped them into envelopes. My plan is to make native seed bombs for guerilla gardening in January and February.
I ordered some clay online to make the balls with and will see how it goes.
So much of the rewilding and restoration work in this country is focused on the Northeast and Midwest. Very little seems to be happening in the Northwest. For example, there are online nurseries for native plants, but none locally. And there are native seed bombs available on Etsy and Amazon, but not for the Northwest. My ifyouplantit focus this year will be researching how to help move some focus to Seattle.