woad 3

Well finally my woad was ready for harvesting and I made a special trip to the allotment with my secateurs.
I’d been chatting to another woadie in Frome, who had told me that rather than going through the very lengthy process of extracting the pigment, I could in fact use the fresh woad leaves to make a more delicate shade of dye. It gives subtle spearmint shades rather than the blue normally associated with indigo. I had seen a description of this process being applied to fresh indigo leaves, so decided to give it a go.

Even this process was fairly slow and time consuming:
chopping leaves,

heating water and steeping the leaves (careful not to let it get too hot), adding soda ash and sodium hydrosulphate, whisking for ages and ages as the froth turned blue and then back to green again, but finally the dye bath was ready to use. I dipped my prepared cloth and watched the magic process of pulling the cloth out of the bath a greeny/yellow colour and watching as the exposure to air turned it blue-ish.

Unfortunately there wasn’t really enough dye to make repeated dippings to get more intensity of colour, but I hung them all out to dry anyway.
Sadly by the time they had dried they were much paler and by the time they had been properly washed and rinsed they just look like whites that got into the wrong wash…
Oh well, it was fun to try, but probably not something I’m going to make into a regular activity.

woad 2

I thought I was going to have to call this post "oh woad is me" (and it may come to that eventually). After sowing the seeds in great excitement and watching them germinate and sprout, they just seemed to stop and enter a period of stasis. After a few weeks the leaves started to get a bit bigger, but the little stems didn’t get any bigger and don’t look strong enough to hold up the plants.
Anyway, Stu and I decided we just had to go for it. We went up to the allotment and took the plastic sheeting off a patch of earth. We dug over the top layer and pulled out the couch grass and raked and levelled and then planted the little seedlings. (When I say "we", it was mostly Stu doing the heavy stuff and me getting to do the fun bits – but Iris helped as well).
The plastic collars are supposed to give them some protection from slugs, but really they’ve just got to take their chances – after all it was a weed originally!

woad

I was given some woad seeds for Christmas by lovely friends who know my passion for indigo. Woad is a similar plant to indigo, but native to Europe whereas indigo came originally from Asia (and gradually superseded the local product). I’ve only ever bought and used synthetic indigo so far, so I’m very excited about growing and producing my own dye.

Stu has agreed to let me have a little bit of space to grow it on the allotment, and Good Friday seems an appropriate day for sowing. The directions on the packet are a bit sparse so I have found some interesting stuff on the internet about growing and using woad.

Just got to sit back now and wait for the little shoots to appear!