The weld has been drying out over summer and is now ready for harvesting the seed – when the seed head is shaken the tiny seeds just scatter and fall
Let us know if you want some…
Seed saving
Category Archives: Dye Garden
The dye garden in August
Over the summer we have continued to develop the garden with some more paths, new plants and general maintenance which included a lot of watering to keep things alive. When two sycamore trees were felled we had a ready supply of wood chip for the paths and some logs to make simple seats for the gardeners.
Storing the flower heads
We have been collecting the flower heads of four plants: coreopsis, rudbeckia, chamomile and cosmos. These have been harvested over a few weeks now and left to dry out in open paper bags. We are also starting to save seed from these plants. It will be interesting to compare the colour extracted from dried flower heads to fresh.
Coreopsis harvest
Mid July and the coreopsis is in full flower. Harvest the flower heads which can be dried and stored or used directly by steeping in water. We grew two varieties of coreopsis. The taller one was easier to grow and seems to yield more flower heads so we will try to save some seed for next year.
Hollyhock Purple
July in the dye garden and these hollyhock flowers are ready to harvest for another solar dye jar.
Dyer’s Chamomile
Starting to harvest the flower heads from the dyer’s chamomile to use in solar dye pots
BFK paper in the Chamomile solar dye jar
Harvesting Weld
Early June and we have started to harvest the weld flowers – the flower spikes are being dried for storage
solar dyeing
Young plants of coreopsis, dyers chamomile and cosmos to yield yellow/orange flowers. These will be harvested for solar dye experiments later in the summer.
Green for Go
Spring warmth and sunshine is developing the garden into a lush green oasis. Seedlings of coreopsis and chamomile have been planted and the main crops of madder, woad and weld are really looking good.
Madder in the foreground and flowers of woad behind which will develope into seed for next year’s crop.
Weld starting to develope it’s flowering spikes.
Woad leaf
Madder
Growing, harvesting and dyeing with madder
Mid April and the madder has started to grow quickly.