Every fall the sweet gum trees drop their balls all over south Alabama, and most folks rake them up and haul them to the road. We pick ours green for our extract, and once they turn brown we still find work for them. Here is what people do with sweet gum balls, green and brown.
What can you do with sweet gum balls?
Sweet gum balls, the spiky seed pods of the sweet gum tree, have four common uses. Picked green, they go into a tincture, which is how we use them. Once they turn brown and drop, gardeners spread them as mulch or pour them on a slope to hold the soil, and people burn them as kindling or glue them onto wreaths. The green balls and the brown balls do different jobs.
How do you use green sweet gum balls?
Green sweet gum balls are the ones people make tincture from. They are picked in late summer and early fall, while they are still soft enough that a thumbnail leaves a mark, then chopped, packed in a jar and covered in high proof alcohol for several weeks. The infertile seeds inside the green balls have been studied as a source of shikimic acid. The tincture is taken by mouth, under the tongue or in a little water.
Talk with your doctor or pharmacist before you start any tincture, especially if you are pregnant, nursing or taking medication. Our sweet gum tree page covers how the tincture is made and used in more detail.
Are brown sweet gum balls good for anything?
Brown sweet gum balls, the dry ones on the ground in winter, have lost most of what the green ones carry, so they are no good for tincture. A bucket raked off the grass in December is a bucket of hulls. They still earn their keep around the yard, though. The spikes and the hard shell make a brown sweet gum ball slow to break down, and that is what makes it useful in a flower bed, on a slope, in the fire and on a wreath.
Can you use sweet gum balls as mulch?
Sweet gum balls can be spread as mulch around shrubs and flower beds. Gardeners use a layer of them because the spikes make the ground unpleasant for slugs and snails to cross, and a neighborhood cat will usually find somewhere else to dig. We've used the brown ones in our own beds, and they take a long time to break down, so one layer lasts. Keep them out of paths and away from anywhere people walk barefoot, since the spikes that keep a cat out of a bed will find your foot too.
Do sweet gum balls help with erosion?
Sweet gum balls can help hold soil on a bare slope, a ditch bank or the edge of a creek bed. Poured on thick, the spikes catch on each other and on the dirt, so the layer stays put in a hard rain better than loose leaves or straw do. Treat it as a stopgap until grass or groundcover takes root. If you have a sweet gum tree in the yard, it costs you nothing but the raking.
Can you burn sweet gum balls?
Dry sweet gum balls make good kindling. Once they have dried out on the ground they catch easily and burn longer than a handful of twigs, so a few of them under the split wood will get a woodstove or fire pit going. Burn only the dry brown ones. Green or damp balls smoke and smolder, so keep your kindling bucket somewhere under a roof.
What crafts can you make with sweet gum balls?
Sweet gum balls turn up on wreaths and Christmas ornaments all over the South. Painted or left plain, a dry sweet gum ball holds its shape for years, and the spikes give a wreath a texture that pinecones don't. Pick up balls that are dry and whole rather than soft or cracked, and shake the loose seed out of them before you glue anything.
When do sweet gum balls fall?
Sweet gum balls grow green on the tree through the summer and turn brown in the fall. They drop slowly through fall and winter, and plenty of them hang on the limbs past New Year's. For tincture, the window is late summer into early fall, while the balls are still green and soft. For mulch, kindling or crafts, any sweet gum ball you find on the ground will do.
How we gather sweet gum balls
We pick ours by hand along clean forest edges in south Alabama, ours and our neighbors'. We have worked with this tree since 2011. We watch the trees in August and September and pick in the green window, before the balls harden. The hard part is height. Sometimes we back the truck under a limb and set a ladder in the bed to reach them. We do not buy sweet gum from anybody. The balls go into high proof alcohol in small batches on our farm in Opp.
If you would rather not make your own, ours is here: Sweet Gum Ball Extract.
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