Rootopia

Grow, Cook and Eat Together

How to Make Seed Balls

By

how-to-make-seed-balls-blog-post-header-image

 

This may not be one of the best looking activities, but I assure you seed balls are surprisingly fun and part of a rich tradition around the world. I first learned about seed balls from my son’s 5th grade LEGO Robotics team, the Robot Rulers! It is a roundabout story and one worth telling.

First be forewarned: if your kids are interested in LEGO Robotics, know that it is not entirely about LEGOs. LEGO Robotics is about core values required for working together, programming a robot, and problem solving. I like to describe it as “FFA for engineers.”

In 2016, the FIRST LEGO League robotics challenge dubbed “Animal Allies” was designed to encourage kids to explore the complex relationship between humans and animals.  My ten-year-old son and five of his friends (all LEGO Robotics “rookies”) took on this challenge. After much debate they came up with the idea to use drones to drop seed balls to create habitat for animals after a forest fire.

One of the tenets of LEGO Robotics is that “the kids do the work!” Adults can coach, mentor and support, but the work really needs to come from the youth. This was certainly the case for the Robot Rulers. Here is the students’ rationale, or problem identification, for exploring forest fires and reforestation excerpted from their presentation:

Humans and animals share the planet, but the problem is animals are losing habitat. That means they have less places to live, eat, and raise babies. The biggest cause of habitat loss are things humans do. Like deforestation and starting forest fires. In fact, 90% of forest fires are started by humans. Not a lot of animals die in the fire, they die because once their home is burned they have nowhere to go. Climate change makes it worse, but humans can help! Humans can keep fires away by managing land, containing fires, and preventing fires, but if a forest fire does happen, humans can help the animals home, the forest, grow back more quickly.

The Robot Rulers looked at many different solutions to help the forest grow back quickly such as planting trees by hand, but they found the trees take a lot of time to grow and in the meantime non-native species tend to start growing first. They also learned that this requires a lot of people, and due to landslides and other landscape limitations it can be dangerous and costly.

One students came up with the idea of dropping beavers with parachutes to go in and restore habitat. Everyone laughed, but then they dutifully researched that potential solution and discovered wildlife biologists did just that in Idaho. Seriously: beavers with parachutes. I kid you not. The wildlife biologists even made a video out of it. That idea of dropping things from planes was the genesis for a variety of solutions they explored finally pairing new drone technology with ancient seed ball technology.

So what is a seed ball? According to the students’ research, the seed ball – also known as the earth ball – was originally created by the Japanese. It was also used in Egypt to repair farms after the annual spring flooding of the Nile River.

Seed balls are marble sized balls made of heavy clay soil and seeds. It is an ancient technology used to protect seeds and give them a better chance of surviving. Still to this day people use them all around the world. Here is how you make them:

  1. Mix soil with water. For the soil, people use different mixtures of clay, straw and compost depending on the substrate the seed ball is going into. We are fortunate to live in the Willamette Valley with rich top soil so we just dug soil from around the farm, put it in buckets, and then slowly added water until the soil stuck together.
  2. Place a tablespoon size clump of soil in your hand. The amount of soil does not need to be exact, but about a tablespoon is enough soil around the seed to get it growing (without being too much soil so that it will not combine with soil on the ground as the plant grows).
  3. Put in 1-2 native seeds. Too many seeds could grow and crowd out plants. Of course you can always have your kids put as many seeds in as they want and then observe what happens when ten or twenty plants try to grow from that one spot of soil. It is a worthy experiment. In fact the Robot Rulers first made seed balls and rolled them in seeds so the outside was covered. The result was moldy seed balls. Failure is the best teacher! And know that the seeds you use matters. You do not want to go spreading invasive, non-native plants around. Try this in your garden using vegetable or grain seeds. Not sure what seeds to use? Check the Native Plant Finder, with your local extension agency and a Master Gardener in your state. For limited time, you can also get a FREE Pollinator seed packet from Burpee.
  4. Roll into balls. This is the fun and messy part. The shape really does not matter nor how perfectly round they are. Most often they come out looking like worms or a boa constrictor that just ate a raccoon.
  5. Leave in a cool place to dry. I usually do a single layer of seed balls in shallow cardboard boxes and put them in the pump house or garage.
  6. Gently toss out to plant! It is an important part of the learning process to have kids watch what happens over time and reflect on what they observe. Mark where you toss one, take a picture, and visit it periodically. Ask your kids progressive prompting questions such:

    Did some seed balls germinate better than others? Why might that be? Does it have to do with how they were made, or where they were planted, or the weather after they started to grow? What happens over the course of one season, or two? What would they do differently next time?

Want to learn how to make seed balls from the Robot Rulers? Watch this video! It is a fun 60 second commercial with the Northwest Honda Dealers that the students did during the LEGO Robotics club.

And if you are still wondering how else the Robot Rulers conceptualized utilizing drone technology, here is one more juicy excerpt from their presentation:

We could also use the drone to find and plant difficult places to reach, like remote areas and steep hillsides. Or heat map and figure out where the worst of the fire was and drop the seeds there. We can also use the drone again to check in on how the plants are growing. If there are invasive species like blackberries then we can use the drone to know where to go weed. Our drone design has a heat sensor to sense the worst parts of the forest fire, and an attachment to drop the seed balls.

The students ran all these ideas by experts and found that sure enough drones are currently being used to map the age of the forests, but the Robot Ruler’s other suggested uses of drones had merit and were under consideration.  As you can see they (we) learned so much in LEGO Robotics. What you cannot see is how much each of those youth participants grew individually and as a team. They learned how to listen to each other, celebrate each individual’s strengths, and support a peer when the pressure was on. I strongly encourage you to consider checking out FIRST LEGO League.

Grocery Store Game #5: Reach for a Rainbow

By

Grocery Store Game #5 Reach for a Rainbow

How to get kids more involved in their food? Try this fun game Grocery Store Game #5: Reach for a Rainbow. Below, you’ll see a video we filmed playing this game at our local grocery store. It’s actually a game we play on most grocery store trips to make shopping go faster and more fun. Plus it’s a great way to have kids practice essential skills needed for lifelong healthy eating.

You’ve probably heard the term “eat a rainbow” when it comes to fruits and vegetables. It means to eat a variety of different colored produce. The color of a fruit or vegetable comes from the phytochemicals that determine its colors. Those phytochemicals are associated with different health benefits, so “eat a rainbow” is the way to maximize your nutrient intake. Add to that research that shows that kids who grow or select produce are more likely to eat it – and voila. If you want your kids to eat a rainbow of produce, then they need to be more engaged in how that produce arrives at their plate.

 

How to play: When you get to the grocery store, charge your littles with picking at least one piece of produce from anywhere in the store from each color of the rainbow – red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple – that they are going to eat this week. Remind them they can go to the produce section, frozen aisles, or anywhere in between. That’s all there is to it.

Children learn through play, including games. Here are five important life skills your kids will learn from playing Rootopia’s Grocery Store Game #5: Reach for a Rainbow.

1. Know when fresh produce is ripe.

How many times have you or have you seen someone peel the top back of corn cob, sniff a cantaloupe or thump a watermelon before putting it in their cart? Each produce item has cues to its ripeness you can touch, see, smell and hear before you taste. These cues are only learned over time and with trial. My kid’s favorite is knowing when a pear is ripe. They love to “check the neck” by gently pushing around the stem. If it is hard, it is not yet ripe. If it is squishy, its too ripe, and if it is soft to the touch it is just right. Over time they have learned to get a variety of pears in different stages of ripeness so they will be perfectly ripe all week long till we go to the store again.

2. Experience seasonality.

While our global food system delivers most foods year round, there is still some seasonal availability differences. For example, there tends to be some things that you are likely to only see in your grocery store when they are in season locally like radishes and asparagus in the spring, summer squash mid-summer, or Brussels sprouts on stalks in the fall. These subtle changes in produce offerings usually go unnoticed by kids. But if they are regularly charged with looking and selecting they will experience seasonality.

3. Recognize all forms of produce count.

Frozen, dried and canned produce is delicious and just as nutritious as fresh. In fact, preserved produce is often more nutritious than fresh that has traveled thousands of miles. Plus kids are more likely to consume more produce in any given day if it comes in a variety of forms. For example, it’s easy for my kids to eat 3-4 cups of produce in a day if it includes a whole apple, frozen banana pop, a carrot stick, a bar made with dried fruit, and a kale smoothie or a strawberry smoothie.

4. Know more about where food comes from.

More than ever stores include “local” signs and stories about the farmers in your area who grew the food. This type of story telling adds another layer of engagement with food, and is worthwhile paying attention to. If your kids are too young to read the signs themselves, make the time to read it to them. If there are no signs indicating food origins, you can always read the package and ask the grocer for more information.

5. Be able to navigate a grocery store.

Remember when you first started learning how to drive a car? Even though you have been on the roads around your home for years, it was all new territory when you were in the driver seat. This disorientation is not unlike what happens when kids grow into adults who have to navigate a grocery store and a kitchen in order to feed themselves. The sooner kids know their way around a grocery store and how to find their way through the myriad of food choices on the shelves the better. Not only does it build skills and confidence, it ultimately prepares kids for being self-sufficient adults.

When playing Grocery Game #5, you may need to include family rules like, no shoving your brother to the ground to get to the frozen corn first. Or is that just my boys? But seriously, the fewer instructions the better – just enough to help your kids function in public. Fewer directives switches kid’s brains into “need to know” mode and motivates them to seek out answers to questions they pose themselves to get the task done. You’ll quickly see how much of the mechanics of food selection we adults take for granted.

For example, I’ve seen my own son go for a big red tomato, only to try to take one from the bottom of the pile. Oops. Lesson learned. Toppling tomatoes tower navigated, and tomato in hand, he needed to know what to do with it. Just put it in the cart or put it in a baggie, then in the cart. Yes, the latter. But where are the baggies? He had to hunt for them, or realize we brought our own.  Success! Tomato in bag, in cart. But he put it at bottom of cart and filled everything on top of it. Oops. Lesson learned. Soft and squishy things need to go on top of everything else, or placed in the separate compartment where little brothers usually sit. My son learned a few things about navigating the grocery store on that trip! The lessons are endless, and truly meaningful because the challenge is a real one. We all have to eat. We all have to acquire food somehow – and in America, that usually involves the grocery store.
How do you make grocery store shopping with your kids more fun and time well spent?

 

Special thanks to the crew at the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University for fact checking the verbal contents of the video in this post.

How to Grow A Teepee You Can Eat

By

tepee you can eat
Did you know you can grow a tepee you can eat? (Because who doesn’t want their own tepee?)  This activity is a perennial favorite at our house. I love to grow a tepee with my kids, the neighborhood kids, anyone really. It’s easy, visually stunning, and the perfect getaway for kids.

…

Read More »

Pinterest
Twitter
Copyright © 2016, Rootopia, LLC.