The seed ball journey continues…
You may recall a couple of months ago we began experimenting with making seed balls to use in revegetation this year (see previous blog here). Well, seed balls are now being spread out at the ForestrySA restoration site near Glencoe, and we are very interested to see what happens next.
Monitoring will be important in determining the usefulness of this revegetation technique, and so we have set up in field, and control monitoring in the nursery.
A group of Millicent High students recently assisted in setting up the in field monitoring. The students carefully sorted each batch of seedballs into size classes, and recorded their position placement within one metre square quadrats. In a few weeks, we’ll return to the site to see which balls are germinating and how many germinants are produced, which will hopefully point towards the ideal combination and ratio of clay, potting mix, and seed.
The seedballs in the nursery, which were set up a few weeks earlier, are already germinating giving early signs that this technique is a promising one!