Planting seeds on the March 29th 2024
Maria in Mühlviertel Austria has volunteered to grow some Persicaria Tinctoria for our experiment. We went to her house to place seeds on seeding pots. She already prepared soil from her garden, warming up next to the fire place for the seeds (it was still the end of winter weather). We used paper cups (make sure to make holes on the bottom for water to drain) as seeding pots. Each pots are seeded with ~5 seeds (F) sprinkled on the soil, then padded with a bit of soil, watered well afterwards. We made ~ 90 pots.
She has already reserved and prepared this plot of field for the plants. It is a nice sunny side of the hill, next to the horse sheds. When the seeds grows to “children” size, and when the frost season is over, we will replant the plants to here.
On April 10, 2024
out of ~90 pots, only 13 of them sprouted, with 1 or 2 plants on each pot… I am afraid the seed (F) were older than 1 year (see the growing in Salzburg for comparison). It is hard to say as it still is only after ~ 10 days since planting the seeds. We could wait more to see if more seeds sprout. But for the worst case, I am sending her other seeds so she has enough plants to transfer to the field in mid May.
May 8. 2024
There has been delay as the seeds needed to be replanted (see above for the reasons!). It has been very cold in Upper Austria this spring, and the baby plants are staying indoor, under the special plants lighting. They are still very small, and it will be a while before they can go play in the field…
May 22, 2024
It has been very cold in Austria, a lot of rain and the plants had to stay indoor with the plants light. Finally it is big enough to go to the field!
June 7, 2024
Finally the plants are going outside in the field! It is also warm now and hopefully it stays like this for a while. Maria has transferred all the indigo plants to the field on this weekend. It also rained quite a lot afterwards so it should be a good conditions for the plants.
23 June 2024
Maria’s indigo was planted late in the field compared to other ones.. but now they are catching up fast.
August 17, 2024
Nice news from the Mühlviertel group. They tried fresh leaf dye method and came out very nicely. They said it dyed silk and wool very well, and not so much with cotton. It is known that the fresh leaf dye makes more turquoise/ light blue to gray color. It is also a nice color palette to add on your yarn/fabric creation. I will be curious to know how much they harvest from this year.
October 7. 2024
News from Mühlviertel. The indigo grew very well and Maria is planning to harvest soon.
Here is a photo from Maria’s harvest. The photo is only half of what she has harvested. The table that the harvest is on is 1.2m * 1.5m and it is piling up to 15cm. I wonder how much dry leaves she will get from this.