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.
From my experiments with dying usually you don’t get colour from the flowers, usually the roots. I don’t have much experience, but my attempts were underwhelming using the flowers.
Some plants concentrate their colour (anthocyanins) in the roots, true. I grew some madder and murasaki this year as well, but gave them away since I won’t be around to harvest the roots when they’re ready.
With coreopsis, amaranth and marigolds, colour comes from the flower, and with indigo you use the whole plant. I’ve gotten brilliant oranges from marigolds and coreopsis already.
Cool! Indigo is so neat! Such a magical, stinky thing!