As the season progressed we did eventually get some short bursts of heat and sun, bringing good growth in the dye beds.
There was a little gentle tidying of the woad and indigo beds, mainly because I wanted to try for the best crop possible for my “From seeds to blue” course and I wasn't sure how competitive any ‘weeds’ would be to their growth, but otherwise I pretty much left the beds to their own devices.
In the first week of August it was time to test the pigment development in the indigo leaves…
Using fresh leaf extraction methods, salt rubbing and ice bath, I processed and dyed some samples of silk, linen and cotton. I was really pleased to see some blue appear, albeit relatively pale! So exciting to see this beautiful colour from the plants we’d grown.
Through August lots of flowers began to appear too.
Across the beds we had: calendula, coreopsis, sunflowers, cosmos, dyer’s chamomile, yarrow and marigolds.
It’s been a super busy 2024 for me and I really didn’t have time to use everything from the garden as it was becoming ready to harvest. So after some research, I decided to dry as much of the plants as I could to preserve their pigment - I’m also still learning all the different ways to process things into useable pigment for my work, so I didn't want to rush this part!
I ended up with several different methods for storing the plants as they dried, from a tiered mesh rack to string stretched across my studio ceiling. A very aesthetically pleasing endeavour.
These mini harvests continued throughout the season, as often as I could get to the garden, but always leaving around a third of the flowers for the bees and insects. This has been as really lovely part of this project, seeing how busy the garden has been with insects, feels like more than just providing me materials that don’t have a negative impact on the environment, this is actually having a positive impact!
(Big thanks to Sam for his help with the harvests and for bringing his camera to document the progress. I got so caught up I often forgot to photograph anything!)