Seed addition is often unsuccessful for restoring drylands due to harsh environmental conditions that inhibit germination and emergence. Seedballs have been utilized for centuries in agriculture to enhance plant growth and establishment and have been re-popularized in ecological restoration in an effort to improve revegetation efforts. We deployed seedballs of varying shapes (spherical, disc, and cube), composition (% clay), and with different nutrient and inoculant additives in a field experiment to test their effectiveness on enhancing native plant emergence and establishment. We looked at emergence within the first month following deployment of seedballs and subsequent establishment of seeded native species cover for 2 years following deployment during seasons of peak biomass. We found that seedballs initially enhanced plant emergence but not establishment, and that this effect did not differ significantly between seedball shape, clay amount, nutrient, or soil inoculant additives. We also found that seedballs neither supported nor hindered long-term native plant establishment. We suspect that physical structures, priority effects, and physiological traits of species may have played a more dominant role in native plant establishment than seedball type.