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I’ve been obsessively planning and replanning… and replanning next year’s garden and I’ve decided to incorporate several plants that you can make natural dyes from (you know, the way it was done ‘back in the day’). This decision mostly came about after going through my Richters Herb Catalog and realizing that I wanted over $500 worth of seeds… ridiculous, eh? And that’s just the perennials (because I’m lazy – why replant things?).

Anyway, so the first plant on my list did double duty as both a medicinal herb and a dye plant so I decided to back through my list (did I mention I’m an obsessive list maker?) and pick out the plants that produced dye. I then wound up with a much more reasonable list (in my opinion anyway, hubby dosen’t agree) that came out to around $50.  Actually it’s a bit less because I realized one of the plants on the list grows ABUNDANTLY wild here… did I say abundantly? Let me emphasize ABUNDANTLY.

That plant would be Pokeroot, also known as Poke Berry. It’s berries can produce Red and Brown dyes. This plant likes to try to eat Mom’s rose garden on a regular basis – so that’s $2 saved.

The rest I’m looking at are:

1. Agrimony (Agrimonia eupatoria) – yellow, green, and gold dyes.
2. Yellow Bedstraw (Galium verum) – yellow and red dye.
3. Bloodroot (Sanguinara canadensis) – red-orange dye.
4. Dyer’s Broom (Genista tinctoria) – bright yellow dye.
5. Scotch Broom (Cytisus scoparius) – greenish-yellow and olive dye.
6. Coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara) – yellow, gold, tan, grey and taupe dye.
7. Coreopsis (Coreopsis tinctoria) – bright yellow-orange shades.
8. Curled Dock (Rumex crispus) – yellow, green, gold and tan dyes.
9. Elecampane (Inula helenium) – yellow and orange dyes.
10. Gipsywort (Lycopus europeaus) – black!
11. Goldenseal  (Hydrastis canadensis) – yellow dye.
12. Lilly of the Valley (Convallaria majalis) – green dye.
13. Golden Marguerite (a type of Sunflower) (Anthemis tinctoria) – yellow or gold dye.
14. Garden Sorrel – (Rumex acetosa) – blue and green dyes.
15. Tansey – (Tanacetum vulgare) – yellow and green dyes.

Plus I just read that Sunflowers can be used to make dye as well (I didn’t realize Marguerite was a Sunflower at first) – and since I was going to plant a mix of those in the veggie garden to deter pests I’ll get to test the different color plants to see what dyes they make (because just starting with a yellow plant dosen’t mean you’ll get a yellow dye). I wonder what color will come from the darker reddish-brown flowers? We’ll see!

A word of warning for those looking to set up a Dyer’s Garden – DO YOUR RESEARCH!  Several of these plants are poisonous – either in whole or just parts, to animals or humans or both. Some of these plants will damage others if planted too close while others will help. Just read a lot about them from multiple sources and be aware of your own allergies/sensitivities and those of your family members and pets.

Reading about the ones I”ve chose above is making me tweek my garden plans but so far I haven’t read anything to make me steer away from any of my choices (although it was a close call on the Bloodroot).

I’ve got most of the garden layout nailed down – we’re not going to do any large gourds this year but I may run some spinner gourds and egg gourds up the dog kennel fence or the privacy fence around the ‘barnyard’.

As a side note the gourds I harvested this fall are slowly hardening… I think. It’s a very strange process and I’m not sure how many of them are going to make it. Some of them have rotted (most of the ones that did are ones I expected to but there were a few surprises). There are some that look like they’re rotting but when you tap on them they’re still hard and sound okay – I guess, not that’d I’d really know for sure since this is the first year for this. But we’ll see how it goes. You can check them out in the green-on-the-vine-glory here.

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So the Gourds have eaten half the garden… and tried to take over the neighbors yard and the street for that matter. Apparently gourds cross breed – a problem I’ve had all across the garden, but lesson learned and the gourds look cool anyway. The leaves are getting a little die back thanks to the abnormally cool weather so it’s lots of fun to go out and see if I can spy any new gourd goodness on any given day. Hopefully the vines don’t die back too fast… the gourds have to lose a certain percentage of water before the vines give out, otherwise they’ll just rot… and then Judy B will be depressed!

Most of the gourds appear to have leaned towards the cannonball and bushel gourd persausion. There’s 2 snake gourds that I can find… one is really fat and about 3 feet long. I’ve only found 1 dipper gourd and it looks more like one of those penguin/swan gourds.

The gourds taking over the next section of the garden…

And shamefully… this is the grass taking over the rest of the garden…