Dyeing Garden – Day 201

With the arrival of Autumn, our work in the garden began to diminish. Although we had to weed a little, we basically prepared ourselves for the winter.

We harvested Japanese indigo tops to try one more time a recipe we used before:

…and we also kept the flowers in water to see if they make roots:

We collected tansy tops and hung them to dry for later use:

We harvested seeds of different plants, like the pokeberries:

…the weld:

…and the madder:

Madder roots will not be ready to be dug out until 2014. In order to be able to use them yearly, we need to plant a new group of seeds every spring in another field.

The hollyhocks were still flowering. The flowers can be collected, dried and kept in a cardboard box for future use:

Although the garden itself is not too big (52 m²), its yield on its first year provided us with enough dyestuff for our workshops, and we can proudly say that the colours we obtained are amazing.

Last, and interesting fact: I couldn’t help but taking a picture of one of those fancy plastic bags used as pots to grow tomatos. A few months ago it was bright red, and unlike natural dyes, the (synthetic) pigment on the plastic wasn’t sunlight–fast.