Mixed Moss

So I’m going through the Strengths Quest book right now (shout-out to Sam and Rachel, who are helping me out with it) and one of my strengths turns out to be input. This explains why I am a little bit interested in just about everything. And why I clip magazine articles, and why I prefer the BBC news and NPR’s All Things Considered to the regular news, and why I read the dictionary or encyclopaedia for fun…you get the picture. (Apparently, that last one is in fact ok…and here I thought I was weird my whole life! And before you jeer at me, haven’t you ever gotten sucked into Wikipedia by following those convenient little cross-referenceing links? Yeah, you know what I’m talking about. They’re dangerous!)

So I am henceforth giving myself permission to post anything that interests me here on my blog. Maybe it’ll interest somebody else too. And it’ll save my roommates from being bored silly when I come home at the end of the day and want to tell them the random information I’ve picked up throughout the day.

Today’s fantastic fact is Clover Seed Bombs. That’s right, Clover Seed Bombs. For use in agricultural mahem everywhere. Or maybe not everywhere. But certainly in places like Fernald, about ten miles from where I grew up.
Fernald was a Uranium processing facility between 1951 and 1989. They supplied Uranium for bombs. They also polluted the environment near-by. No, I mean really polluted. As in, people can’t live near it and it is the subject of a government-funded environmental remediation project. People out in the country near it will still tell you quite seriously not to eat the corn grown near Fernald– and with all the accidents they had where radioactive material was accidentally released into the air and the surrounding wells, they’re probably right. The US Environmental Protection Agency issued a notification of non-compliance to the US Department of Energy twenty-two years ago and they’re still trying to clean things up.

So, Clover Seed Bombs. What are they? Apparently they are the subject of a grad student’s doctoral dissertation. I googled it but wasn’t able to locate it; if anyone knows the name, please let me know so I can credit him or her.

Clover is one of a few varieties of grasses that, when grown in contaminated soil, somehow absorbs and mitigates the effects of the radioactive materials in the soil. So here’s how it works:

Clover seeds and stems are mixed with organic compost material and squished tightly into a ball shape. They are then thrown, much in the manner of a grenade, into the affected area. Upon impact, they burst and scatter the seeds and compost across the affected area. (Note: This is probably not the most efficient scattering method, but it has the advantage of being a lot of fun!) The clover is allowed to grow, with the assistance of the compost. The grass is then mown, and the clippings burned. Voila!

Clover seed bombs. Yes, the world can become a better place.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 8th, 2006 at 7:47 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.