Spring is a good time to plant the Apothecary Muse soap wrappers you’ve been saving. You might have noticed the note: “WRAPPED IN PLANTABLE PAPER” shown on the side of your favorite bars of soap. Hopefully, you saved the wrappers so you might plant them and get a second round of sensory enjoyment! The labels are printed with eco-friendly, wax-based ink (think: crayons), on paper embedded with a blend of North American wildflower seeds. Upon flowering, your wildflowers may help attract pollinators like butterflies which also help our local farms to have a sustainable crop. I store trimmings from the holiday show season and either germinate them in a bag during colder months or put the paper in some damp soil and then covering it with a piece of lexan glass like a winter cold frame. But that’s mostly what works for my space and region. Read on to learn more ideas that might work for you:
Germination may begin as quickly as one week or may take up to six weeks depending on your regional growing zone and planting depth. We recommend just 1/4 inch of soil coverage. The full Step by Step journey: How do we ensure a successful planting? It can be tough to nurse the live seeds through germination into fully grown plants and because of these common challenges, we do not offer a guarantee that every customer will be successful in this process. There are too many factors that come into play and too much that can go wrong for us to take the responsibility of elements that we cannot control, like soil temperature and acidity, watering, sunlight and planting depth. We have very rigid testing and handling protocol to ensure that every batch of paper made here contains enough viable seeds for each item that we sell to have the potential for growth. For your own piece of mind we recommend that you do the following; take a small piece (quarter size or bigger) of our made in the USA paper (larger is recommended for made in Nepal stock), place it into an airtight zip lock plastic sandwich bag, place a table spoon of water (or enough to fully saturate the paper) in the bag and then seal the bag and trap a bit of air inside it so it forms a bubble to keep both sides of the bag from touching. If you do this in a room that is has an ambient temperature of at least 72 degrees and allow the bag to be touched by sunlight for a few hours each day. You will see evidence of the seeds growth within 10 days time. Once you see the sprouts roots searching for soil, transfer the paper from the bag into a pot (or garden) with a light covering of soil and continue nursing the seedlings along by daily watering.
Thanks to Of The Earth for their Step by Step instructions!
