I want to grow all my soap ingredients!

by Kent
(New York)

I have a small farm and I would like to grow crops which I can make all my soap ingredients (oils and herbs). The two oils that I know I can grow the crops and make the oils are sunflowers and pumpkins.


Can I make a decent soap out of pumpkin seed oil and sunflower seed oil or do I need another or different oil?

Answer:

Soap can be made using any oils. The key is to use oils that will give your soap certain characteristics.

Most people prefer a soap that is hard, has a nice bubbly, creamy lather and is moisturizing.

A soap made with just pumpkin seed and sunflower oil would be very moisturizing but the bar would be quite soft and would probably have a very thin lather.

For information on how to formulate a recipe, visit my page on Fats & Oils and scroll down to the heading "Formulating a Recipe".

Cathy

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starstarstarstarstar 		What about wax
by: kent

I have discovered I can grow Northern bayberries and make bayberry wax. I see you only want to add 1 to 2 % of other waxes. Is bayberry wax the same. Again I am trying to make a vegetable soap that I can grow all the ingredients my self.

So far I can easily grow bayberry ( and make bayberry wax ), sunflower seed oil and pumkin seed oil.

Is it possible to make a soap from these three ingredients? If not do you have any other suggestions?

Answer:

I don't know anything about making soap ingredients from scratch but you can find information to help you decide which oils to use in your soap recipes on my Soap Making Oils page. Scroll down to the heading "Formulating a Recipe" and read to the end of the page.

You can basically make soap out of any oil you like but every oil will impart it's special characteristics to the soap. The key is to use oils that will give your soap the characteristics you want.

Cathy
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starstarstarstarstar 		Looking for another oil
by: kent

Can you recommend another oil which I could use to enhance the quality of the soap and that I could grow and extract myself? I want to make a soap that I have control of all the ingredients?

I thought of castor oil but the castor bush seeds are poisonous so thats out. Maybe Flax seed oil?

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