Life with Wool: Fleece Among the Flowers

Greetings from Maine!

At long last, the balmy days of summer are upon us. Now that our final frost date is in the rear-view mirror, the seedlings that I raised under grow lights and then hardened off in the barn can finally make their way into the ground. Tomatoes, peppers, cosmos, strawflowers, and a dozen permutations of zinnias, all straining in their pots, soon—as soon as I finish this column, in fact—are headed off to summer camp in the garden.

Having tended these dear plants for months now, from seed to cotyledon to leaf, it seems only right that I should give them a proper sendoff. This being my house, that proper sendoff will, of course, involve wool.

The very same qualities that make wool so ideal to clothe the human body make it an equally ideal companion for our plants. I’ll be providing a wool-based trousseau for all my seedlings, something to help them keep cool, moist, comfortable, and fed all summer long.

Before you ask, I’m not knitting tiny sweaters for my dahlias or draping doilies around the tomatoes. At least not yet. My general rule of thumb for wool in the garden is simple: The more raw and unprocessed it is, the better.

Handspinners with a propensity to acquire more fleeces than we can possibly spin will find the garden a welcome opportunity to unload. A few minutes of heavy skirting can relieve our fleece overwhelm and yield a fresh supply of fiber for our plants.

You don’t need to scour the fleece first. Between the fibers and the funk on the fibers, a raw wool fleece is packed with nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, and sulfur, as well as trace elements of iron, manganese, boron, copper, zinc, molybdenum, and sodium.

Should you not have access to, or an appetite for raw wool, don’t despair. A slow revolution of pelletizing technology has been underway.

Instead of pelletizing compressed wood for the stove or ground timothy hay for the guinea pigs, it’s being used to shred wool that’s still raw and rich with all the funk your garden craves. The shredding process makes the fibers much more palatable to your soil, pre-chewing them so that they’re ready for rapid digestion.

You simply scoop a handful into the bottom of your planting hole, or mix them in your potting soil, or sprinkle them around the top of your plants, or all of the above. It’s that simple.

What’s to be gained from this exercise?

First, there’s water. We all know the statistics about how wool can hold up to 30% of its weight in moisture before it feels damp to the touch. That’s important when we’re wearing wool. But wool continues to absorb up to 200% of its weight in moisture before it truly gets full.

In the soil, those saturated wool fibers act like millions of tiny water bottles for your plants to draw on when they get thirsty. One study suggested as much as a 30% reduction in the need to water.

Next comes thermoregulation. If you’ve worn wool at all, you’re already familiar with its exceptional ability to help our bodies maintain a stable, comfortable temperature. Whether buried deep or spread on the surface, wool provides the same HVAC services for our plants.

On the surface, wool biodegrades slowly, holds in moisture, keeps soil cool, and acts as an excellent weed barrier.

When buried in the soil, wool still holds moisture and keeps roots cool, but it also facilitates fungal and bacterial growth that produces the enzymes needed to break down wool—leading to the slow, steady release of all those nutrients into the soil. While doing so, the fibers also relax and unfurl, acting like microscopic earthworms to keep the soil open and aerated.

What about dyed wool, or wool that’s been treated for machine washability? I can’t speak to whatever subtle impact those treatments might have on our soil. The science is still out on this. But considering the far more widespread prevalence of pesticides, microplastics, and PFAS in our soil (and bodies), bits of hand-dyed yarn dug into the rugosa bed seems fairly benign.

So the next time you discover a moth-eaten skein of farm yarn in your stash, as I did just last week, consider getting out the scissors and giving those fibers a proper burial in the veg patch. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, sheep to spinach, ewe to eggplant, lamb to lettuce, it’s all in keeping with the rather miraculous cycle of life.

I like the promise of wool pellets. They put much-needed revenue back in the hands of small family sheep farms, and they make perfect use of a valuable material that’s being thrown away far too often.

In my dreams, we’d have a system of regional pelletizing equipment so that everyone can mulch locally. Until then, a quick Google search will give you a ton of options. Better yet, head to your garden store and see if they carry pellets yet. The more we ask, the greater the chance we’ll see them in the future.

Are there any drawbacks to using wool in the garden? Really only one: Your garden may occasionally end up looking like a flock of sheep fell asleep in it. Which, as far as I’m concerned, is a good thing.