I just finished harvesting all my dye things from my garden, here are some snippets.
The red is Elena’s Rojo Amaranth, and old variety that was nearly lost during the civil war in Guatemala, but was brought back by maya communities. It’s named after the indigenous farmer who was primarily responsible for its recovery.
Going clockwise from there is Japanese (or Chinese) Indigo. A historically important plant used for dyes, paints and inks in Asia going back to at least 2000BC.
Next is marigold, a source of reds, oranges and yellows depending on the ph of whatever it’s mixed with. Most plant-based colours are sensitive to ph, for example you can slightly hange the colour of roses by altering the soil ph.
The purple wisps at the bottom are petunias, which aren’t historically used for dye but they had such a rich colour I want to try.
Last are Cinnamon Dyers Coreopsis, a traditional dye plant native to North America, long used by indigenous peoples and settlers for yellows, oranges and reds.
It will be a while before I’m set up to start extracting pigment and making dyes again, but I’m looking forward to posting all about it.
Looking forward to hearing how it goes. The amaranth looks a lot like the ‘Magenta Magic’ orach that I grow for food (eaten like spinach), which I think is in the amaranth family. It’s probably my favourite plant and I’d be really interested to see if it could also be used as a dye.
I just looked that up, what a cool looking plant. In my experience anything with a deep colour has been great for dyeing. You should give it a shot.
It is very cool! It’s great to eat and I really like that it grows tall. It looks fantastic when it goes to seed as well.
Definitely interested in making some dye from it too!