I just had to share this video that the V&A have put on YouTube: In Search of Forgotten Colours – Sachio Yoshioka and the Art of Natural Dyeing.
Sachio Yoshioka runs the family dye workshop in Fushimi, southern Kyoto. Since 1988, he has only used plants and other natural materials for his extensive range of beautiful colours.
Although the video is informative, I like just watching the yards of beautiful colours go by…
I’m beginning to move on from the idea of a dedicated dye garden.
I suspected this moment would come.
Originally, I had plans for a kitchen garden. I set up eight raised beds, and allocated the beds to different types of crop. I grew annuals on the square foot basis, where plant spacing is governed by how many plants fit in a square foot of the plot, so you might have 9 smaller plants, but one nice big cabbage. This system has lots of advantages. It helps you to move away from the initial pleasure of having a whole row of lettuce, and then realising that you have a glut, just at the same time as everyone else does. You plant a couple of squares with each crop, and as each is harvested you plant something else in that space. With a small amount of planning, you have a sensible quantity of a variety of crops, and you don’t have to think too hard about crop rotation. And on top of all that, the plot looks nicer, because if there are unsightly spaces, they are smaller and well distributed. As a theory, I can recommend it.
My garden is very windy, so I selected as many weatherproof varieties as I could find, giving priority to dwarf ones, on the theory that they had to be less vulnerable to wind damage. Then I sorted out some perennials. I had a bed of rhubarb (two thirds of which is still there), some raspberries and strawberries (a magnet for bindweed) and some asparagus (which did nothing at all).
The broad beans did well in the first year, as did the lettuce and some of the sprouts. But by the second year, word had got out. Before anything was near being ready for me to eat, it had already gone to a selection of slugs, rabbits, pigeons, and deer.
Last year I decided to try a dye garden. I planted up a couple of beds with perennial dye plants, and left them to settle for the first year. Obviously, all the plants were quite small, so I filled in the spaces with some annuals that would cheer things up and keep the dye theme going. I got some beautiful marigolds and some dark fuchsias and petunias from the local nursery. The next time I looked, they were gone. And yes, I did remember slug pellets.
I have had a couple of sessions over the winter combing the seed catalogues for entries including the words tinctorius or tinctoria, and had an interesting selection of seeds to try this year. Most are annuals. I suspect these will go the same way as the annual vegetables. Some are sunflowers, which I think won’t survive the wind.
I drew up a sowing plan, and put reminders in my calendar. But next door’s cat used the roof of my little greenhouse as a springboard to get back over the fence once too often, so I’ve had a bit of a bottleneck, with not enough space for growing plants on the window sill. So some seeds are still in the packet, and inevitably of course, some didn’t germinate.
So I reckon that annual seeds are probably not the way forward. Until recently, there hasn’t been much sign of life in those raised beds, if you don’t count dandelions, nettles, and docks. The comfrey and the woad are making a good effort, but there was no sign of anything else.
I had a massive weeding session over the Bank Holiday weekend, and discovered a few tentative shoots emerging. The rosemary and sage are still there from the kitchen garden, and although they show signs of being attacked by the Beast from the East, they are trying very hard to get over it.
So I am going to leave last year’s planting to sort itself out, see how far I get with this year’s annuals, and fill up the rest with perennials and shrubs. I’ll plant dyestuff when I can, but you have to be realistic, don’t you?
Well, I’ve finally bitten the bullet.
I’ve read dire warnings about the importance of being patient with woad harvesting, because:
I only have a few plants, and they don’t look very big. However, on the whole people who write about natural dyes are working in larger quantities than I am. They need enough yarn to knit a jumper, or the fabric to make a tablecloth. I’m working with light weight scarves that weigh 7-8g each.
I decided this week that I needed to make a start and see what happened. I used the vinegar method, which tends to extract less pigment, but it is quicker, so I thought it would be a good guide as to how things were going. After all, I didn’t even know how much a woad leaf weighed, so I didn’t know how much I needed.
Woad is a member of the cabbage family, so I wasn’t surprised that as I chopped it up there was a smell of overcooked cabbage. It got quite strong, so I was pleased to mask that smell by covering the chopped leaves with a mixture of cold water and white vinegar. I kneaded it for 5 minutes, strained off the liquid, and repeated the process. That produced a bright green liquid, which I reckoned would be enough for 5 scarves.
I thought I would play safe, in case it is too early in the season to get a lot of colour. I put in two white scarves, one of a pale mustard that comes from buddleia, and one that had been dyed a golden orange with dahlias. I tied them all up in various ways to make patterns.
The scarves soaked in the dye bath for about an hour, and then oxidised on the washing line until they were dry. I left two more scarves in the dye bath overnight, to soak up any remaining colour.
I’m pleased with the result, but I found that this dye doesn’t penetrate the folds quite as much as others I have used, so I have rather more undyed fabric than I expected. With the gold scarves that I’d previously dyed with dahlia and buddleia, I was expecting the result to be green. However, because of the lack of penetration there is rather more gold left than I had bargained for. I might have another go at those two…
I don’t know if you have ever tried, but buying woad plants is quite difficult. Seeds are quite easy to come by, but I don’t have fantastic conditions for seeds and seedlings. One of the reasons I am starting a dye garden is that I can’t cope with vegetables.
I live in an old windmill, so you won’t be surprised to know that it is quite windy here. My theory is that I need to grow varieties that are marked weather resistant, particularly if they are also marked wind resistant. At a minimum, I go for dwarf. The less you stick up, the less you get hit by the wind.
So I grew veg from seed. When they got to the hardening off stage, the “sheltered” place I found for them just wasn’t quite sheltered enough. I replaced them with plants from the local garden centre, but something ate them.
So after a couple of years of trying, I’ve decided that a vegetable patch won’t work. Before I resorted to shrubs, I started my experiments with dyeing. My research into useful dye plants that are likely to grow here yielded quite a lot that could only be grown from seed.
So I prioritised those that I couldn’t find for sale in plant form.
But then when I tried to buy woad plants, all the websites said they were sold out.
Bother.
So I was really pleased when I found these. They have obviously had an ordeal in the post. They were beautifully packed, but it has been quite warm recently. They looked so squashed and tired when they arrived that it just didn’t seem fair to take a picture of them.
But now, after a few days of regular watering on a warm floor, next to a nice big window, they have recovered. I’m going to plant them out!
I’m quite excited.
All winter, I have been tending some seeds.
OK, so let’s be honest, that gives a rather broad impression. I planted some seeds in the autumn:
Now the rest are ready to be re-potted or planted out. And because I don’t have enough flower pots of a suitable size, out they are going.
Fortunately, I now have a cold frame to harden them off. So they have not been the victim of the wind. Keep your fingers crossed that they survive the peasants, deer, and rabbits whom I suspect of eating the vegetable plants!
The one I’m most excited about is the single survivor with big leaves. He is comfrey. Apparently, William Morris said that comfrey gives the best natural greens. So I can’t wait to try it. After all, anyone who can come up with 
“Have nothing in your home that you do not know to be beautiful or believe to be useful” must know a thing or two.
The more delicate looking plants are Dyers’ Broom.
I’ve stocked up on slug pellets, and I have my fingers crossed!!
