Thursday 10 June 2010

Dye garden - my first woad plant!

Although space is at a premium in our little garden, I've been wanting to grow dyeplants for quite some time. Regular readers will know that I am carefully nurturing a little madder plant (fingers crossed it's still doing well!). I also found out that I have some goldenrod at the back of one of the borders which was a nice surprise. A friend of Mum's has very kindly offered to germinate some other dyeplant seeds for me so hopefully that will be a success. But what I have managed to grow is some woad!

If you recall, this is how it looked in early Spring...


And this is it a now!


Well, of course I realise now that I should have harvested the leaves last year but my little plant looked far too tiny and delicate so I thought I'd wait - oops! Anyway, the flowers have now almost finished and it is producing lots of seeds so I'm going to collect some and see if I can get these to grow for next year. I may harvest the leaves anyway rather than let them go to waste. I'm determined to make my own woad balls so these might be good for practising the technique even if they don't produce much colour. Watch this space.....

2 comments:

Crobbles said...

Wow, it really has sprung up in the last month. It was still quite small when we went to France. What a cheery show of yellow flowers.

Debbie said...

Yes, a little overpowering for the front border perhaps (!) but have saved some seeds for a spot at the back next year (fingers crossed!). ps. Have saved some aquilegia seeds for you : )

Email me updates

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

Twitter Updates

    follow me on Twitter

    Pinterest

    Follow Me on Pinterest

    Debbie's Slideshow

    Heritage Crafts Association

    The Heritage Crafts Association

    Craft Rally

    P/hop

    Blog Archive

    UK Knitters Blogring

    Creative Connections webzine

    About Me

    My photo
    Hi and welcome to my blog! Check out what's been cookin' in my Colour Cauldron and see what's been keeping me busy.....
     
    Dyers Web Ring
    Powered By Ringsurf