This is a good time of year to sort out the seed harvest and divide them into envelopes to swap or give away.
The dye garden can supply the following seeds to any staff or students who would like to grow their own colour: weld, madder, coreopsis, woad.
The coreopsis appears to have survived the recent stormy weather and is growing on strongly. It will be needed for a Dyelab workshop in July so hoping to see some flower buds soon.
Lots of weld seedlings which will need thinning out. These will provide a harvest for next year. Weld is an essential plant for the dye garden as it produces a strong yellow dye which has good list fastness properties.
June 24th is St John (Baptist) Day and coincides with the midsummer flowering of Hypericum/St John’s Wort.
A harvest of flowers from St John’s Wort for use in the next dye pot. Not sure which colour it will produce on cotton paper…..
Walnut is a dye stuff that can be used on both animal and vegetable fibre without a mordant. Once you have set up the dye bath, add your fibre and leave it to take up the colour. With a solar dye bath, you might leave it for a week say….or longer perhaps.
A friend has sent in some dried walnut husks from her garden. These will leach a lot of colour when rehydrated.
The husks have been mixed with hot water and will be left on a sunny windowsill to encourage the colour into the water.
March 2021
At last, work can restart on the dye garden after a year of absence.
Most of the plants have survived the very dry season last year. But some areas will need replanting and weeding.
A larger patch of comfrey has been planted, teasel and cornflower seed has been sprinkled so hoping for some warm weather and spring rain to see them germinate.
A peacock butterfly was spotted sunbathing near the garden
The dye garden now has a sustainable supply of rain water via this water butt on the Waste House. Thank you to the person who donated this to the garden project. It will be much appreciated both by the plants and the gardeners.
Safflower looks like a yellow thistle and it is the tufty bits at the end of the “flower” that are harvested for colour. The dye process is complex but can yield bright pinks through to buttery yellows.
It is early July and the the sun has brought out an abundance of flower in the garden: yarrow, weld, hollyhocks, chamomile…and a huge pile of woad seed has been saved for next year.
These berries house the madder seeds and are ready for saving when the fruits start to shrivel up like these ones.
Coreopsis seed is allowed to dry and mature on the plant. Each of the little dried flower heads hold lots of tiny seeds which just fall out when you squish them so have a paper bag underneath to catch them.
In a few days we will be harvesting this woad and making a vat with it. I will post the results here next week.