First attempt at Kokedama

I finally decided to try my hand at creating my first kokedama plant.  I had heard about it from my good friend in Abu Dhabi and not long after that, I discovered a lady selling them and decided to buy one. So far, it's been doing really well!  I think I like the fact that you only have to soak it in water for about 15-20 minutes in order to water it.  And I do that about 2x a week.

Kokedama is a Japanese form of planting and basically entails wrapping the soil and a layer of moss around the plant's roots.  I decided to try it with an orchid since my last orchid did not survive regular watering.  It seems so finicky so maybe this technique of growing might work??!

It was very tricky to hold the soil together.  I thought I had orchid soil in my she-shed but could not find it.  I did buy some peat moss and bonsai soil (who even knew those existed!  Perhaps that's why our bonsai plants all died).  And then I wrapped the sphagnum moss around it:

I couldn't quite shape it into a ball. The combination soil of peat moss and bonsai soil kept falling apart and so that meant the sphagnum moss kept falling apart as well.  Then I recalled a video using some sort of mesh, which thankfully - being a hoarder I am, had an old green avocado mesh bag.  Yay!

And once everything was wrapped around with the mesh bag, it was time to wrap the twine around that.  I didn't realize how much twine these kokedama would use.  It's a good thing I bought a big bundle of it.  Ta da!!!

It looks so pretty!  I was going to hang it but decided that it looks better on a plate on our bookshelf:

I even bought a pretty hook for it but decided it was too small.  So instead, I took the hook that was in the boys' bathroom and replaced it with this new one.  And to cover up the extra screw hole from the previous towel hook, I finally was able to use a photo frame that a friend of mine gave a super long time ago. I love these photos of the boys that we took at the park last Fall:

This is what I have going on right now, but hoping to make a couple more kokedama to add to the collection :-)

My indoor fern has always been struggling so maybe making it into a kokedama would be better.  And this Christmas cactus hasn't bloomed since we got it and that was probably 2+ years ago now!

I actually had a kokedama kit mailed to my sister for her birthday in February but she said there wasn't enough twine in the kit.  So she didn't exactly tie it all up in a ball.  But at least she likes the fern that was shipped.  

Looks like more kokedama projects are predicted in my future :-)