Top time for sowing hardy annuals - poppies, cornflowers, lavatera, godetia, sweet rocket, coreopsis, ursinia, limnanthes, gillia, wallflowers, agrostemma, legousia, red flax, corn marigold, sweet peas, cosmos, myosotis, foxgloves, scabious, quaking grass, calendulas, phlox, vaccaria, silene, matthiola,.

Sown around the first week in September, the plants will germinate easily and grow away with the residual summer warmth of the soil, overwintering as stout little plantlets.....which will bloom a few weeks earlier than a spring sowing.....with altogether vastly sturdier plants. Cornflowers, for example (centaurea annua) will make a 3feet tall dainty plant from a spring sowing, whereas an autumn sown plant is easily 4 x bigger, more floriferous with a strong vigorous stem which resists bending and flopping

please explain what a seed bomb is. . . thanks. . .

much beloved by guerilla gardeners, a seed bomb is a collection of seeds, held together in a soil/clay medium. Tossed into an urban lot with lots of bare ground, the weather (rain, wind) ensures that the substratum crumbles, dispersing the seeds around ready to germinate and grow.

Yes. Seed bombing is a method of spreading beneficial or decorative plants to areas that are mostly neglected. I often wish I had a few seed bombs to throw as I'm getting on or off the free way. Some of those exit ramps could be fantastic spots for pollinators and other native creatures.

Martha

Martha - that's a wonderful idea! I threw out seedballs over the wild part of our property in May- June. Mine were all grasses and wildflowers which I'm hoping will take root. A friendly GW member (hi Tex!) graciously sent me a TON of seeds. All our rain comes in summer, so this is the right time for seeding.

Having a box of seedballs handy to throw out when you pass abandoned areas or weedy lots is a great way to increase native wildflowers and grasses.

Cheryl

The Slothful Method:

I'm just lazy enough to simplify this method of guerilla warfare. I can't see spending a whole day making balls and I'm too cheap to buy clay so what I do is bag up all my dead heads into paper grocery sacks, smush each one which is filled to the gills & packed hard like a pillow with the top rolled hard. I stack & store them for battle.

I'm even too lazy to clean the seeds so its stems, leaves etc in there with all the deadheads and zillions of seeds I collect when trimming down in late fall & early winter. I then take these to waste areas or any ugly spot in need and dump them all around on the ground, usually when I know its going to rain the next day.

Surely out of all those seeds something will take hold, grow and later reseed itself even without the bit of clay and other ingredients in the balls. Otherwise, they'd all be going to the landfill where I've already 'donated' huge amounts of various species of cactus pads to be pulverized and buried. Any piece of pad will take root and grow so if I was awful & really mean I could easily create some areas here into little mini hells but don't think it would be a good idea at all to create thick groves of cactus so I'm very careful about disposal on those.

Jadeite--on that hostile barren caliche biggest, bad-assed "hell strip" you have to deal with, meaning the dry danger zone on your property where the pack rats rule the roost, seed balls would definitely be a must. I imagine a seed ball could lay on the ground for years before a favorable opportunity presented itself. I'd even think about doubling the dirt/clay part just to give the little guys a bit of protection & help to put out a root in the beginning in some actual soil. Here in wheat country, seeds germinate a bit too easily & stuff grows a bit too well so I can afford to be lazy. We've had a lot of rain this year and a machete would be needed in many areas along the sides of the roads just to get in there through the thick tall grass, underbrush and trees.