How to Make Home Made Paper You Can Plant

How do you make plain plantable paper?

Hardiness Zone: 8a

By rhonda alden from Chaparral, NM

Answers:

How to Make Home Made Paper You Can Plant

All you need is the wood of your choice (the softer the better, scrap pine wood is a good choice), a wood plane, your paper frame, bleach, a pocket knife, a blender, a basin or sink, food coloring and water. To keep it eco-friendly, you may wish to use fallen branches around your home.

Take your wood plane and shave your wood down into small, skinny strips. Use your pocket knife to cut the strips down to very small pieces; they should each be smaller than an inch in length. Shave off the bark if you do not wish for it to show up in your finished paper.

Dump your small shavings into your blender and cover them completely with water. Blend them well until the pulp is nice and watery, like a wet powder. If you have an extra blender on hand, you may want to use that one, as blending wood can really dull your blender blades.

Add a small amount of bleach (only if you wish to make white paper; use other food colorings if you would like different shades of paper) and let it sit to soak into your mixture.

Finish as you normally would, adding your paper mixture to your paper frame within your basin, making sure it's even all the way across the screen. After the water has been filtered out of the screen, allow it to dry as you normally would, and you'll have your own wood pulp paper. (03/20/2010)

By Shirley