Kokedama! – In the craft room

A couple of weeks ago we had an amazing crafternoon, and learned to make kokedama! As expected, the very next week a few of us got together to make more! A wonderfully addictive craft – have you tried it?

We used a recipe of 7 parts peat moss to 3 parts bonzai soil with enough water to hold it all together. I would suggest making a small one to begin with, we had a choice of mini mondo grass or jade plant. I chose the jade plant for mine.

First of all prepare a pot with a piece of stocking stretched over the top, knotted at the bottom. Line with spagnum moss which has been soaked in water. Make a little palm sized ball of the potting mixture, and then break it exactly in half, that is one way to check if you have the right texture. Insert the plant and continue to massage the ball so that the root is well contained. Pop into the spagnum lined pot and pull the stocking up and around. Add more moss if needed, and then tie the stocking off close to the plant so that the moss is sealed inside. It is ok if a little pokes out of the top.

Now you start with wrapping the string around your little kokedama! Firstly tie around the plant from top to bottom at an angle, then begin to weave the longer end around on the right hand side of the original tie, and coming up on the left hand side, crossing over to the right and up again on the left. Continue in this way until the entire ball is covered with string or until you are happy with the result.

Here I used crochet cotton, which is much thinner, but you have more colour options and I think it looks better when wet. This is a little carnivorous plant that likes to be fairly wet. I have kept it in a bowl of rocks, so that it is not standing in water, but the water in the rocks creates a little moist microclimate.

In the end I made quite a few, one little one I hung above my garden mural, because my macrame had rotted away and the poor plant was just dangling by a string.. Three others I placed onto a tray of stones. They just require dunking in water once a week. I am not crazy about the way the string deteriorates over time, so here I just put one layer of the crochet cotton on top.

I try not to use peat moss as it is unsustainable, and here in the tropics coconut coir is my first choice. I used one part each of coir and potting mix, and then a quarter part each of perlite and clay. I will monitor them all and let you know how they each turn out. Let me know if you have made kokedama (or if you have never even heard of them!) and if you want to make them now after seeing how cute they are!