Flower Farming with Wool Pellets - Part I

It was a cold January night at 1 am and I was surfing Youtube, learning all of the ways to reduce plastic use on our farm by soil blocking and maybe trying to lull myself to sleep. Except the sleep part never happened… because I found this video: DIY seed starting soil mix (peat free, suitable for soil blocking or trays! By Blossom and Branch Farm. 

I never went back to sleep that night because I was in awe of 1 ingredient in her soil mix - wool pellets! Wool pellets are compressed bits of 100% raw wool that would normally go to waste from the sheep shearing process. Little highly nutritious bits for your plants and soil.

Laura on a bed of waste wool at a recent sheep shearing on San Juan Island

If you have ever been to the San Juan Islands, you’ll recognize we are fiber rich. Island farmers love sheep and for good reason! Sheep are a great multipurpose animal to have on your farm and homestead (fiber, meat, milk, fertilization and land management to name a few). 

My late night finding became an all out obsession and search for wool pellets to use in our January seed starting. Eventually I did find some that winter, but my findings piqued the interest of my equipment obsessed husband. Who then went on his own deep dive into the world of pelletizing.

Between that time and the time I’m writing this blog post (about 18 months later), we now are the proud owners of 8 sheep, a regenerative u-pick blueberry and flower farm, and a wool pelletizer on Orcas Island. 

3 of our Valias Blacknose Sheep

Life comes at you fast!

While not everyone will be as crazed as I am about soil building and regenerative gardening/farming, wool pellets absolutely should hit the mainstream and here’s why:

Imagine all of these benefits in one product and environmentally friendly in every way. 

You also don’t need much! Instead of buying bags and bottles of fertilizer, you can amend your soil one time in the growing season with wool pellets. This increases the microbial life in your soil and allows the living organisms in your soil to not depend on synthetic nitrogen amendments throughout the season. Plus, wool pellets will not burn your plants. 

Soil amending is a constant work in progress, so we always recommend getting a soil test to see what your soil needs. 

So now if we have convinced you to try wool pellets, how do you actually use wool pellets?

Have questions on how to implement wool pellets into your soil amending? Send us a note

We are just gearing up to do another production run on our new pelletizer. If you’d like to hear when more Tekla Farm Wool Pellets will be available, join our email list and follow our wool journey on Instagram or Facebook.