Cool Concept of the Week: Seed Balls

Take 100 to 200 properly chosen seeds of plants, trees, fruits, and vegetables, and pack them in a hardened sphere of mineral-rich red clay. Scatter one about every square foot, and in a year you have a sustainable Natural Farm. Requires no watering, pesticides, fertilizer, or even topsoil, and you can plant at any time. Seed balls can be scattered manually or dropped into remote areas by plane. Fully sustain one person per 2,000 square feet of land planted this way.

This method has cheaply and quickly restored tall grass prairies, watersheds, wildlife habitats in New Jersey, and arid lands in Thailand, the Philippines, Africa, and India. Masanobu Fukuoka, the inventor (or discoverer) of this natural technology, won the Magasay Prize for it in 1998, the Far Eastern equivalent of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Hawaii has lots of red clay. Why not make native seed balls and use them to quickly repopulate areas with native plants?

"Seed Balls: A New Tool For Revegetation":