New Invention Lets You Sow Seeds with a 12-Gauge Shotgun

Studio Total, a Scandinavian creative lab run by Per Cromwell, has invented Flower Shell – a 12-gauge seed-filled shotgun shell that can be blasted into the ground by a shotgun. You can plant columbine, cornflower, daisy, poppy, sunflower, clematis, lavender, sweet pea, lupine, carnation, peony and meadow flowers using Flower Shell. Cromwell told Wired that depending on species “each shot contains between ten and 100 seeds; smaller poppy seeds, for instance, end up at about 100 per shell, and to fill an average-sized garden it will take about 20 shots.”

Wired writes:

The product is all made by hand, with Cromwell going through the time consuming process of opening up existing shotgun shells, removing the lead, filling them with the seeds and then using paper and fabric to create a barrier so those seeds are protected from the direct blast.

Cromwell explained on Indiegogo (the campaign is over now):

From early on I liked gardens more than gardening. Hour and hours of weeding, seeding and cutting and all I could think of was, how could this be made more fun? One day when seeding some meadow flowers it struck me, this could be made much easier, faster, better using a shotgun. Said and done, soon I had emptied a shotgun shell of lead and filled it with flower seeds.

This only made me more motivated, I tested different seeds, different ways of closing the shell after modification, different amount of gunpowder, different angels of firing and different guns.

Walking through a field of meadow flowers, cornflowers, daisies and poppies an early summer Sunday morning made me realize this was working. This flourishing field was my creation; it was all done with 142 shotgun shells. Finally I’ve cracked it, I was done. It worked.

Instead of lead (or bismuth, steel, tungsten-iron, tungsten-nickel-iron and even tungsten polymer loads polluting the nature) my shell is firing flower seeds. The shell is a standard 12 gauge (0.729 in, 18.5 mm diameter) shell. The amount of gunpowder has been reduced and adjusted to fit the different seeds.

This is how the Flower Shell works:

Since the Flower Shell contains gunpowder and primer, the seeds fired from the shotgun can still be dangerous. Studio Total warns that the shells should be used with caution:

“Warning: Seeds fired from The Flower Shell may cause severe damage. The shells must be regarded as real live ammunition.”

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