Young Dye Plant Seedlings

"Wonderful weather for the Bank Holiday." My companion, Elinor Gotland peered into the trays of seedlings that had been carried outdoors to enjoy a day of direct sunshine. "I think your coreopsis could do with a drop of water."

"Hmmm. The Impatiens balsamina seedlings are still damp but it's done them no good, they've all flopped anyway. Looks pretty terminal to me. I think their stalks grew too leggy by the window indoors to cope without a greenhouse. Even in this warm weather." I slid my glasses back up my sweaty nose to focus on the other trays. "No sign at all of the woad germinating. Possibly two miniscule weld plants are sprouting. Or maybe they're weeds."
"Ooo, you've got more than half a dozen Japanese Indigo coming up. That's good isn't it?"

"Not sure where I can grow Japanese Indigo plants if they do survive. When I tried to dig a hole in the garden to put that clematis in, I found a solid foot of builders' rubble two inches below ground. Not exactly a cool moist root run."
Elinor sighed. "The very thought is dehydrating. Get the kettle on, Beaut."

"Fancy a walk?"  Elinor finished the Diabolical Sudoku and put her newspaper down.
"Suppose the dog needs an airing." 
"You could do with some sunshine too, you mouldy old Grouch Bag. Dig your sandals out and let's go and enjoy the lambs in the fields and Spring just bursting up everywhere."
"I'd gladly wear the usual woolly jumper, hat, scarf, coat and bring an umbrella if we didn't have Lockdown. Spring ought to mean going to Wonderwool, shopping for fibre, meeting all my friends and eating cake and I'm just sad that none of that will be happening."

"Chocolate cake! Crack on with the baking Beaut, it's practically Easter." Elinor dumped a bag of shopping on the kitchen floor. "Got all the ingredients for you. Did I mention I've gone Vegan?"
Including avocados in both the sponge and the icing had strangely contrary effects. Far from being cooked in 25 minutes, the cake mix stayed gloopy in the middle for over an hour, by which time the frosting seemed to have solidified. Luckily, it softened up again in an improvised Bain Marie over the broccoli soup. 
I yelped as the tea towel slipped off a hot cake tin when at last I could turn the sponges out.
"Couldn't you just have bought some custard creams, Elinor? They're vegan."
"Never." She looked at me severely over her specs. "The palm oil in them is not sustainably sourced."
"Heaven forbid you should eat an unethical biscuit." 

"No animals were harmed in the making of this chocolate cake." said my companion with great satisfaction.
Sucking the burn on my thumb, I reflected that this was not entirely true. 
Happy Easter Everyone 

Free Woad, Weld and Other Dye Plant Seeds

Free Woad, Weld, Madder, Coreopsis Tinctoria, Japanese Indigo and Impatiens Balsamina Seeds

Now all gone, thanks everybody 
Small envelopes of dye plant seeds saved from my garden last autumn are available for free with free postage, because I shan't be taking them to talks and workshops this spring and would be delighted to find them good homes. UK only, offer ends when the seeds run out.

*******

I practically choked on my tea when I saw the envelopes. "However did you find those dye plant seeds?"
My companion, Elinor Gotland just smiled and shrugged.
"Perseverance, Beaut. With all those stacks of boxes you've got piled up, I knew it was odds on there'd a few seeds saved in one of them."

I moved house last winter. 
Truth be told, I have still not entirely unpacked and was not in the least prepared for visitors. In practice, the whole virus crisis has caused me only the most minor of inconveniences. When Elinor appeared on my new doorstep, masked and gowned in sterile whites, my first thought was that himself must have dropped off another loo roll. Then the swathed shape swanned indoors demanding tea.
"You wouldn't believe what a journey I've had. Eerie, the quiet on the streets, absolute nightmare finding a cab across Paris to the Eurostar. Feels like I just caught the last freedom moped out of Nowhere City."

Brushing aside COVID -19 precautions as not applicable to sheep, my companion gave me a hug and ensconced herself in the spare room. Next morning she returned home from Asda with a clanking bag of shopping and a sack of seed compost.
"Life's little essentials for me and a gift for you, Beaut. Probably not peat free, but fair play, needs must. Still reusing those old plastic seed trays?"
"Well, that's very kind but I'm not really organised for gardening, Elinor. I mean, there's no greenhouse here, just a north facing yard. In any case, I didn't buy a 2020 biodynamic calendar and I've no idea when the moon will be right."

Elinor tipped the woad seeds into a jar of water.
"Give the silicles 24 hours to soak, isn't that what you used to do? We can sow your seeds tomorrow."
Next day I did find some small seed trays, filled them with damp compost and sure enough, the little yellow woad seeds were easy to strip out of the middle of their sodden silicles. It didn't take long to lay a dozen out in a grid, cover them with a dusting of compost, press it down to get them in good contact with the soil, then label and wrap the tray in clingfilm.

Once in the swing of it, I carried on sprinkling trays with Coreopsis tinctoria, Impatiens balsamina and Japanese Indigo, none of which need to be soaked in advance and even remembered that weld seeds need maximum light and should be surface sown without any top covering of compost. 

Looking at the filled trays, my cheery mood evaporated.
"Oh hell and damnation, Elinor. The only room in this house that gets much direct sun hasn't any windowsills." 

"What a good job you've got all those boxes. Shove them over to the light, right up against the wall, don't stand there like a lemon."

That was five days ago and things seem to be working out. The Coreopsis sprouted after three days and this morning, when I turned the tray in which seedlings are already stretching for the light, I noticed that the Impatiens seeds are also germinating. A whole new dye plant garden remains a long way off, but as a start, I think this is good enough.

Dyeing with Weld Plants

A week ago I stood a tray of weld seeds in full sun on the greenhouse shelf because I'd decided long hours of daylight would germinate the seeds fast. No sign of life today, but no surprise because I found the compost dry as a Ryvita. My companion, Elinor Gotland, called from her deckchair on the lawn.
"Were you right about a bit of sunshine getting your weld seeds started then, Beaut?"
A full ten minutes watering the greenhouse had left me gasping in the humidity. I staggered out and veered across the lawn, attempting to dodge the question. 
"What a dramatic change this heat is from all the cool weather we've had." I reached the dye garden and stood there dripping sweat and trying to look nonchalant. "Rain then sun has really suited the weld plants, just look how many new flowers have grown." 

Since its main flowering spike was cut two weeks ago, my biggest weld plant has sprouted over a dozen lateral flower spikes. Quite an impressive effort.

That first main spike weighed 125g and has gone on to dye an even more impressive 250g wool yarn. Every batch of plant dye turns out a little differently, but since this one went particularly well, it seems a good point to record my current method.

I have found the strongest dye comes from chopping the plant material into large chunks and leaving it to ferment in cold water for at least three days, preferably a week. The water becomes faintly cloudy, slight frothy and properly stinky. Simmered for an hour, the dye bath looks only pale yellow and will test acidic at about pH 4 if you have indicator paper. 

Adding enough dissolved soda ash to bring the pH up to neutral 7 will turn a weld dye bath deeper yellow and I think leaving the plant material in the pot while dyeing also adds to the strength of colour. Starting with 125g weld, I first added two 50g skeins of wool yarn mordanted with 10% alum, simmered them for an hour and left them to cool overnight. Next day, they were a deep golden yellow, more like the colour from Dyer's Chamomile than the acid yellow I usually get from weld. I heated one skein with some dissolved iron to sadden the yellow to green and repeated the whole process with another two skeins, which went a more typically lime yellow. A last 50g skein was simmered soaked for a few days while I was away from home and even that turned primrose yellow.

"I think the first flower spikes give the strongest dye, Elinor. As they've given me plenty of dyed yarn, do you think I should do some contact printing with this second lot or just cut the spikes and hang them up to dry?"
"Best you let those flowers set seed, Beaut. Somehow I suspect you need to sow another weld seed tray."

Cultivating Weld Plants for Dye

I walked out into the garden thinking this could be the perfect day for sowing weld seeds and as I reached the greenhouse, my companion jumped up in delight. The miserable June weather has forced her to move her deckchair inside and while the interior of the new greenhouse does provide an exclusive orangery ambiance, mobile phone reception is so dodgy that the poor soul often has to trek back to the house to order her tea and biscuits.
"Feeling parched and peckish again, Elinor?" 
A gust brought rain in through the greenhouse door and mud splattered the gravel as I dumped down half a sack of sodden seed compost. My companion shuddered and stepped back.
"Do shut the door - if you care nothing for me, at least spare a thought for your chilli peppers. I can't think why you're bringing in compost, Beaut. This weather might feel like April but it's far too late to be sowing seeds."
I wiped my hands on my jeans and the rain off my specs.
"The summer solstice is upon us. Weld seeds germinate best with lots of light and since this is the longest day of the year, it must surely be a good time to start sowing next year's weld plants."

I usually sow all my dye plant seeds in March. The seed trays sit on the underfloor heating in the bathroom and within a matter of days, tiny shoots appear and off they go, out to the greenhouse to grow on. Weld is the only plant with delayed germination. I've found that even when seeds are sprinkled on the surface of the compost with no earth or vermiculite on top, they remain inert until they get not only warmth but really decent light. Still, sooner or later, weld seedlings do appear in the March sown trays and although officially a biennial, with an early start, most of the plants will flower the same summer. 

This year's March sown weld plants are presently modest clumps of leaves, half of which have put up flowering spikes about 40cm high. They'll grow bigger and when I cut the main spikes, plenty more will shoot from the lower leaf axils. A few young weld plants won't flower, they'll just remain as low rosettes of leaves. Next spring, those will grow into plants 1.5m tall which start flowering by the end of May.

Weld flower spikes provide a great weight of material and thus a better harvest of luteolin dye than picking individual leaves from young clumps. Spikes are also simple to hang up in bunches to dry and dried weld leaves store their strong yellow dye for at least five years. Once they have finished flowering, the weld plants die. Since the second year plants grow so much bigger and generate ten times as much material as those that flower in their first year, it has become clear to me that though you have to wait longer, it's altogether more productive to cultivate weld as a true biennial. I've tried sowing fresh seed in September, straight from the last of the weld spikes, but once again, have found germination is uncertain. Maybe that's because the plant has been forced to go on flowering unusually long because I've picked spikes til the end of August and by September, the light levels are diminishing with the season. Left unpicked, early weld flower spikes would be setting seed already which would be scattered by the wind around the summer solstice. 
So theoretically, I reckon today could be the ideal time to sow weld. Even if there's little sunshine, we do have have long hours of daylight. Next week it's due to get warmer and I'll try to remember to put up another photo of that seed tray. See how long it takes the seeds to germinate.

Dyeing with Dried Indigo Leaves Again

Since salvaging dye from the neglected Japanese Indigo plants of 2017 proved such an unexpected success, I felt much less pressure to use all of last summer's harvest in fresh vats. Following Deb McClintock's method, whenever I had a surplus, I cut stems and tied them in bunches to dry in the greenhouse. 

These have been stored in big paper bags under the spare bed. When I saw a beautiful pale blue shawl on a display at Wonderwool, I bought the pattern, thinking to myself I could recreate that colour using the dried indigo. Also, what a great excuse to buy some silk blend yarn to catch the light and show off the complex cabled border pattern. 
Once I dragged the first bag out and started to crumble the leaves off the stems, what appeared to be a large volume of dried indigo soon shrunk down to a modest net bag full weighing 200g.

Even so, that was twice as much as I had before. Once again, I followed John Marshall's instructions as described in Deb's blog, just doubling all the quantities. Previously I had dyed 200g wool tops with 100g dried leaves, so I expected a strong blue on my first 100g skein of yarn and a medium blue on the next and intended to dye a pale blue skein last. In practice, it took three dips each for two skeins to reach two shades of mid blue. Possibly the weight of dried indigo was deceptive, because I did leave lots of small stems in with the leaves. I exhausted the vat with a bit of wool blanket and have saved my other skein of fancy yarn for another time.

The dyed yarn is knitting up with stitch definition just as nice as I hoped and though this pattern takes all my concentration, it's a pleasure to make. Here's a link to an online source, Ravelry  of course, the designer is Helen Kennedy and it's called Closer to the Edge.

Using Madder Root and Water Only to Dye Alum Mordanted Wool

My companion and I stood on the doorstep, bracing ourselves to step out into the June rain drenching the garden.
"At least you won't have to water the pots, Beaut."
"I never water the madder barrels, those roots need sharp drainage. Mind, I don't know if that hot summer last year might have been too dry, even for madder."
"Well, you'll find out soon. Didn't you just use up the last of the dried roots?"

The remaining 100g of dried madder root from last spring's harvest had indeed been chopped in a food blender, covered with boiling water and left to soak overnight. In an attempt to replicate the success of my previous madder dye session, I followed the same minimalist process, simply adding more water next morning before putting in an equal weight of yarn mordanted in 10% alum. The pot was heated to more than hand hot but not boiling, kept hot for an hour, then left overnight. Despite the dye bath being naturally mildly acidic, the 100g skein of 4ply Falklands Merino/Silk blend came out a decent colour, though not as blood red as the alum mordanted skein of Blue Faced Leicester wool I dyed last week (shown balanced on top).

I had simmered the other half of that original skein of Blue Faced Leicester in the afterbath, just to see if the yarn itself might hold the key to success. Of course, there was less colour left in the dye bath for it to take up, but I do think it is somehow redder than the first. Apart from being a different kind of wool, I remember that that particular skein was among some that got neglected and accidentally left in a cold alum mordant bath for five days rather than two. It is dawning on me that the longer things soak in alum, the better they seem to dye, even though increasing the percentage of alum doesn't seem to make much odds. To exhaust the dye bath, two skeins of coarse wool yarn in pale shades of grey were heated briskly and left to fester for a couple of days before I poured the mouldy gloop onto the compost heap. By that time, it had fermented down to pH 5 and the yarn looked distinctly orange.

After we had walked the dog, I laid out the products of my two madder dye baths and sat back to contemplate them. Rain hammered on the skylight.
"Were those madder roots worth waiting three years for, Beaut?"
"Yes. I think so. I like all the colours and I'm a bit further forward with understanding the dye. Next time, I shall do an experiment dyeing yarn that has soaked in 10% alum for two days versus yarn soaked for five days."
"So, when you're dyeing with the roots you dig out of the next barrel, you won't be trying calcium carbonate or bran or rinsing the roots or changing the pH or the temperature?"
"Just adding water is good."
Elinor emptied her Wellington boot out into the sink.
"Not if you're a sock."

The Secret Garden Crochet Pattern - Review

"Look at those foxgloves, Elinor. I am so on trend. Vertical impact galore, my Dye Garden border is totally Chelsea."
"The stems aren't straight though, Beaut. The judges would mark you down for that."
This week, my companion and I have been glued to the TV coverage of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. Fabulous foxgloves are everywhere and half the designers seem to have been fretting over wiggles in their spikes. My foxgloves are just the ordinary kind, Digitalis purpurea, which self seed every summer. All I have to do is move the young plants to the spots where I fancy having flowers the following year.
Down at ground level, this year's weld and coreopsis plants are settling their roots in. My greatest gardening efforts go into raising dye plants from seed - Dyers' Chamomile is the only perennial in that border.

Earlier in the year, I went sorting through a pile of double knitting wool yarn I'd dyed with plants in previous summers. Lots of single skeins and no two shades quite the same. Small projects are all very well, but I find the preliminary chopping and changing and false starts can become wearing. It's good to have a bigger objective, something to fall back on when inspiration runs short. 

The Secret Garden by Catherine Bligh was a wonderful find amid the jungle of patterns on the Ravelry website. Inspired by Frances Hodgson Burnett's book, the central squares of this crochet blanket show snowdrops and daffodils representing early spring, with successive circuits of squares working outwards to high summer with roses and lilies. Thrilled by the concept and delighted to find the pattern was available as a free Ravelry download, I pressed print and soon realised I'd need a file to keep the whole thing in order. Fifty pages of clearly illustrated and carefully written crochet instructions came spilling out of the printer.

Crochet may not be my forte, but even I can be gently led through the steps to create these delightful squares. The amount of work that Catherine Bligh has put into documenting and sharing her patterns is breathtaking. I sighed with satisfaction.
"I love this blanket, Elinor. Each flower is a new and absorbing puzzle."
"It takes you all evening to make the first one and by the time you've got it cracked and knocked out a few squares, you're on to a new flower."
"Wonderful, isn't it? I'll never get bored. A perfect way to celebrate my dye garden in a blanket of naturally dyed colours."
"Yours is hardly a Secret Garden."

Elinor remains far from convinced that it has been a good idea to take out more and more hedges and fencing to let in more sunlight. I'll admit, the neighbours do tend to stare at the sight of a small grey sheep doing yoga on the back lawn.
"It'll be more private when the sweet peas and beans have climbed up the trellis."
My companion sniffed.
"The central square of this blanket is supposed to show a key, but you don't even lock the back door at night."
"I shall adapt the daffodil square and make a camelia with silver birch bark dyed pink yarn. That's often the first colour we have in the garden as well as my first dye of the year."

"How are you getting on with your round of crocuses? Got that pattern sorted yet?"
"It took a few goes, but I can do the little squares by memory now."
"White ones, yellow ones ... you've done an awful lot of blue ones. What about the purple crocuses?"
"You know I don't grow any purple dyes. I'll have to miss them out."

"What's the next round going to be then?"
"Primroses and delphiniums."
"No delphiniums in this garden."
"Well, the same pattern square could work for other tall flower spikes that I do grow."
"What, like foxgloves?"
"Yes, exactly."
"Purple foxgloves. I thought you couldn't dye yarn purple." 
Lucky for me some of my foxgloves came out white. Lucky for me that Catherine Bligh is such a skilled and generous soul. It will take me a while and the finished blanket will be a hotchpotch of different yarns, but I'm enjoying crocheting every square, learning a lot and grateful for every page of instructions she wrote.

A Dye Gardener's View of Malvern Flower Show

I strode up and down the patio picking pots up and putting them down again, not sure which plant to put where, undecided what border to sort out first.
"Flower Shows are so packed with inspiration, I always come home with my creative juices in full flood." I clasped a small helianthemum to my chest. "You know that show garden we saw, the Malvern Telectroscope? Just imagine how brilliant it would be if I built something like that next to our front door."
My companion, Elinor Gotland, looked at me and sipped her tea.
"All those creative juices just washed a dead horse downstream. A Telectroscope here - himself would have a fit."
"Maybe just a small periscope sticking up out of the lawn, as if a submarine were about to surface?"
"Wouldn't it be a 'subterrine'? A lurking paté de fois gras, perhaps? Why don't you stop crushing that poor plant and find it a place in the sun."

The opening day of the RHS Malvern Spring Festival may have been damp and grey, but it fizzed with ideas. As well as the Show Gardens, there were five Green Living Spaces, all of them joint projects between interior designers and garden designers.
"Wouldn't you have loved to have one of those studio gardens, Elinor? I can just imagine you lounging artistically on the divan inside that one with the cob wall."
"Looked like a shipping container left next to a pile of mud and bones."
"Oh, don't be so mouldy, upcycling an old container is good for the planet. I loved it, everything within that space was natural, sustainable and handmade, lush textures of wool and linen, wood and glass. Even the planting had a soft palette."
"Soft palette? That garden was lisping for the lack of a palette, it could ask for tea but heaven help its plosive consonants if it fancied a bit of cake."
My companion wasn't entirely wrong. That Green Living Space would have sprung to life if the designers had added just a couple of textiles woven with bright, plant dyed yarn.
"People don't always appreciate that natural colours can be vivid and varied. Plant dyes are still pretty niche. Still, reasons to be cheerful, now Monty Don has started growing dye plants on Gardener's World, I bet they'll get a much higher profile."
"What's he planted then, Beaut?"
"Madder, so there'll be alizarin scarlet. Only he put his plant in the border, not a tub, so I'm worried the roots might rot like my first plants did when we had a wet winter. There was a woad plant, only since it's ready to flower, he'll have to save seeds ready to grow lots next year. Otherwise, I think he had hollyhocks, marigolds and St John's Wort."
"Oh good grief, what a plonker."
"Don't you call Monty names, he's my personal hero."
"This summer, your hero is going to show the world some sadly fugitive colours. Hollyhocks and marigolds won't set the nation alight. Feeble and ephemeral. He'd better save half his St John's wort to make a tincture to cheer him up when all his Fair Isle knitting fades to beige."

I dug a hole and firmed the heliathemum in.
"I suppose you could be right, Elinor. Monty Don does need some proper dye plants. Weld, coreopsis tinctoria, anything with 'tinctoria' in the name."
"Well, he won't find them at Malvern Show. All those hundreds of trade stands we went round, thousands of plants and not a decent dye among them."
"That's not quite true. I did see one Dyer's Chamomile plant."
"The exception that proves the rule and I bet Monty won't find it."
"One day, Elinor, dye plants will cover the front of the displays, people will demand them because they are so beautiful, fascinating and useful."

I finished weeding the herb border, placed a few more of my new plants in the spaces and stood back to consider the effect.
"We had a grand day out at Malvern. I was pleased to buy old favourites like this sage and thyme, but much more excited to pick up six kinds of chilli and talk to the nursery owners about conditions for growing sorrel and old school herbs you'd hardly ever have seen on sale in the past. Tastes change, things get rediscovered and growers and suppliers respond. Dye plants won't be forever hidden in the farthest corners of the RHS Plant Finder. One day, there'll be whole trays of Dyers Chamomile and shelves full of Japanese Indigo at every flower show." 
Elinor finished her tea and dusted the biscuit crumbs off her front.
"And one day, Beaut, you too shall have your own Telectroscope."

Plant Dye Greeting Cards with Free Seeds

Delighted to introduce these dye plant cards, which come with gardening instructions and free seeds. 

Now available here if you'd like one to send to a friend who'd enjoy natural dyeing.

A sharp East wind kept me out of the garden this week. Thanks to an equally sharp prod from my companion, Elinor Gotland, I have braced myself, got to grips with html coding and set up a Dye Plant Card Shop Page. As well as the gardeners' choices, there are three cards in a 'Live Fast, Dye Young' series; simple instructions are written on the back with a view to encouraging beginners to try natural dyeing. 

Here's how the online card shop began ...

Rain poured off the greenhouse roof while inside I gently dripped water onto my dye plant seedlings. My companion,Elinor Gotland, sauntered along the workbench inspecting the trays. 
"Looking good, Beaut. What are you going to do with all the extra seeds you saved last autumn? Seems a shame they'll never have their moment in the sun. Assuming we ever get any."

"I'm giving little seed packets away free with every dye plant greetings card I sell at Crafts by the Sea. Advice on sowing, growing and harvesting the plants is written on the back of the cards and people round here seem to be taking to the idea of dye plant gardening. Even so, I've got far more seeds than will ever get planted in local gardens."
"You should try selling those cards online. Send free seeds all over the country."
That idea pleased me very much. So I've set up the online card shop and will see what happens.
Meanwhile, back in Ogmore by Sea ...

A pan of onion skin dye has taken up residence in Crafts by the Sea's kitchen and so far, no eggs have been broken by the kids who come to try their hand at printing small leaves onto eggs. My companion was impressed with the instructions on the Egg Printing card.
"Fair play, you've cornered the market for Easter Cards with this one, Beaut."
"Actually, I think fluffy chicks are still the Craft Shop's best seller."

Elinor looked up from her reading.
"Do you think silver birch bark dye is really suitable for beginners?"
"Well, it does need a dedicated pot for dyeing, but no mordant is needed and I've found I can get away without any heavy duty scouring, just soaking my fibres before dyeing . Plus it makes a lovely looking card."

"True, but Cath's art looks even more gorgeous. Her Dye Garden painting has printed out like a jewel box."
"I went to the same printer as did the Dye Plant Calendar for me last year. FSC Accredited and Environmental Impact Certified and still achieving that lustrous, glowing, quality finish."
Elinor put down the card and moved on.
"What on earth persuaded you to make these two?"
"Oh. The poetry cards. Sentimental, I know. Those are the poems that come to mind whenever I walk in those woods by Merthyr Mawr or Dunraven Walled Garden."

Elinor looked at me askance. 
"Surely I can't be the only one who likes a poetic kind of thing?"
"Mmm, well, you're going to find out the hard way." 
My companion had reached the last card.
"Speckled Face Beulah sheep? When you could have had a glamorous Gotland in your photo?" 
My blood ran cold, how to explain that away? 

"Elinor, don't you see, you are of course the 'Missing Ewe'.

To buy any of these cards, click 

here 

to get to the Card Shop page.