Late March / Early April: Hurray! Planting Soon!
Look! It’s the whole dye garden before it bursts to life!
It’s hard to believe it’s already April! How ?! That means we’re just a couple of weeks from planting the dye garden and I’m so excited <3 We started some Japanese indigo inside about a month ago - it’s doing really well. A couple of days ago I transferred the seedlings into slightly larger starter containers so that they wouldn’t get too spindly. Unfortunately, although a lot of the plants we’re planting in the dye garden would benefit from being started early inside, we don’t currently have enough space or direct sunlight to do it for all the plants. Because the Indigo really does well this way, we decided to see how it works out this year and if it makes a huge difference, I’ve been thinking about a little greenhouse or something of the sort for other plants, next year. Anyway, that’s a ways off! For now, look at all these sweet Japanese Indigo babies (this photo was taken a couple of weeks ago, when they were still pretty tiny):
Sweet baby Japanese Indigo
The other thing I’ve been doing a lot of is staring at seeds. I just find them super fascinating, especially looking at them side by side. They’re really beautiful, aren’t they? And they hold so much in them, it kinda blows my mind. I decided to take a photo of all the seeds we’ll be planting (not pictured: Indigo, Dyer’s Chamomile, St. John’s wort, Hollyhocks and Black Eyed Susan Coneflowers because they aren’t currently in my hands, and the Dahlia’s cause they’re tubers) - check out these beauts!
I wanted to share where I purchased seeds from this year: The Japanese Indigo came from The Dogwood Dyer, the Purple Basil came from the Seed Savers Exchange, the Weld came from The Woolery, both Sunflowers (cannot WAIT to try the Hopi Black seeds!!), the Marigolds, the Cosmos, the Dyer’s Coreopsis, the Safflowers and the Zinneas are all from Siskiyou Seeds.
You might wonder why I’m trying so many Marigold varieties, and it all boils down (pun intended?!) to how they eco-print. I’m interested in using the plants in this garden for both batch dyeing and also for eco-printing. To oversimplify - in batch, or pot dyeing, pigments are extracted from the plants through boiling or simmering them in hot water for a certain amount of time, straining them, and then dipping or submerging the fabric or fiber that you want to dye into the pot. In eco-printing, there are various methods of pressing the flowers and leaves themselves on to fabric and transferring their pigments and shapes directly onto the fabric almost like a stamp. I’m curious to see if I can get any of the beautiful color compositions on some of these different marigold blooms to show up through the latter method.
Lastly I wanted to mention that I’m very excited to be taking the “Become a Home Natural Dyer” workshop with Sarah Tremaine of Sarah Tremaine Design, starting on April 22nd (the class starts on Earth Day, how lovely is that?). Registration for the workshop is still open and the early bird price is valid through tomorrow at midnight! Anyone out there want to come take the class with me? Sarah is in the Community Gallery (go check out her profile), I’ve taken a class from her before and she’s a really great teacher - it’s my duty to spread the word of cool people doing cool things like this!
I look forward to what’s happening in my little perennial garden out in front of my house every day. Every day I go out and look at the new daffodils, tulips, hellebore blossoms - check out progress on the peonies, columbines, larkspur, blueberries, poppies, irises, lilies, bleeding heart, and the little leaves unfurling on the Eastern Redbud and the Crepe Myrtle. This is such an exciting season, I hope you all are enjoying the beautiful weather we’ve been experiencing - warm wishes to all!