Low cost, highly effective reforestation comes in the form of Teddy Kinyanjui’s seedball invention. Seedballs Kenya has pioneered a method of mass producing seedballs for low cost and efficient reintroduction of trees and grass species into degraded areas in Africa.
Biochar Seedballs: the idea & history
The history of charcoal use in Nairobi goes back over 100 years and since the founding of the ”Green City in the Sun”, charcoal and firewood have been the main energy source used to power its growth.
No one knows exactly when charcoal became a popular household fuel in Kenya. But it seems to have become a common fuel with the advent of urbanization and the arrival of the traditional metal charcoal stove introduced to the Kenyan interior about 90 years ago from India.
According to information from charcoal-makers, charcoaling, especially in the coastal and central regions of Kenya, became an income-generating activity as far back as 1915 and was highly commercialized in the 1950s.
In subsequent decades, charcoal-making grew in magnitude and geographical spread, as urbanization accelerated and country roads improved. The trade spread to the Rift Valley, Western Kenya and finally to remote arid and semi-arid zones of the northern region.
Until the late 1970s, the raw materials for charcoal seemed inexhaustible, being ubiquitous and available at virtually no cost. Government forest reserves, open rangelands, upland watershed zones, and lowland semi-arid areas became the main sources of the fuel.
How Seedballs Work
Simply put, we are giving Mother Nature a helping hand by protecting the seeds from predators and sun until the appropriate natural environmental conditions trigger germination.
Direct seeding reduces transplant shock and helps the young trees grow stronger roots which inturn helps them grow into stronger trees. We focus on the rehabilitation of land so damaged by man’s activity that natural reforestation is unlikely or not possible at all.
Using seedballs, the reintroduction of tree species that have been partially or completely removed from their original environments is as natural a process as can be undertaken.
