All Natural, biodegradable alternative to mulch and fertilizer
Wool Pellets
Learn about wool pellets
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Wool pellets are made of just that, wool! Straight off the sheep!
Low quality wool that would normally end up in a landfill can be transformed into a usable product that provides nutrients back to the soil. The full fleece, including vegetable matter that was caught in the wool, manure, lanolin, and anything else that the sheep was carrying around with her gets ground up into tiny pieces. These little bits are compressed into a loose pellet shape for easy handling.
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The benefit of wool in your garden can be three fold:
slow release nitrogen
moisture retention
pest deterrent
The pellets can provide nitrogen to the soil as they break down over the course of six-twelve months. This results in a steady, long lasting rate of nutrient supply without the risk of burning, leaching, or uneven growth. Wool pellets test at 11-0-4 NPK value.
Wool is incredibly moisture retaining and can hold up to 20X its weight in water or other moisture. While this might not be a great thing for your wool sweaters, it is amazing for your garden. Sheep farmers often bury full unprocessed fleeces in their gardens to keep their plants moist even in the hottest summers. A more practical option for the average gardener is using wool pellets that have been designed to break down and leave no trace in your garden after the season is over.
Another natural quality of wool is the little scales on the shafts of the fiber. Each individual hair has these bumps that pests absolutely hate crawling on. Especially in the case of snails and slugs, you will notice a major decrease in the presence of pests if wool pellets are spread over the top of the soil.
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It is recommended to apply ½ cup per gallon of potted soil or 1 pound of pellets per 10 sq ft of garden space.
They can be applied as a top dressing like a mulch, worked into the soil more like a fertilizer, or layered underneath another kind of mulch to take full advantage of the water retaining capabilities of wool.
Reminder that wool pellets are nitrogen dominant (NPK value 11-0-4) so nitrogen loving plants will benefit most from their application. A few nitrogen loving plants for example: blueberries, sunflowers, leafy plants like kale and spinach, garlic, broccoli, etc.
By purchasing and using wool pellets in your garden, you are helping local farmers “close the loop” in their production. Wool that has been made into pellets has practically no other use in the commercial wool world and would otherwise end up in the landfill.
So not only are you taking advantage of an all natural material to benefit your garden, you are also helping farming become a more sustainable practice and keeping our planet cleaner.