Protected: The True Colour of the Cotinus, print blue and extract pigment
Protected: Introduction to Botanical Printing on paper and fabric
Protected: Botanical Printing and Indigo dye workshop 2022
My Indigo diaries 2022 – The Indigo plot April news – Meet the growers … Nicky
24 Home growers have embarked on that blue path of growing Japanese Indigo in Scotland with me. Small quantities but a big connection. We hope to grow plants, dye blue but also create connections between us and nature, between us as growers, farmers, dyers… I have asked them to write a few words to introduce themselves and talk about their journey as first time Indigo growers.
Please meet Nicky… I met her through my online teaching of botanical printing. She volunteered early and wanted to take part for her own personal reason… read for yourself.
“Hello, I am Nicki Wilkins, (writer, artist, home educator, soul midwife/mentor), living near Dundee, on the east coast of Scotland, and I will be growing my indigo plants at my allotment plot on the west side of Dundee Law with the most beautiful view of the Lomond hills in Fife and the River Tay.
I have been chasing blue (or blue has been chasing me) for most of my life, but it was when my mother died in 2013, and I began to find all her knitted blue blankets tucked away in her home, that I started a poetic relationship with blue. I then began writing about the way the colour blue motifs my midlife journey. My memoir, This Slender Blue Thread, is why I am part of this growing indigo project. I like working with blue!
As an eco-artist, working with the natural materials I forage, I’ve dabbled in printing, cyanotypes, indigo vat building, and currently I am working with wild clay documenting my menopausal journey.
My art practice is grounded in my relationship with the natural world around me, and I enjoy working with plant materials from seed to colour. While I plan on exploring indigo dyeing with paper (the poet in me wants blue paper!), someday I hope to make my own indigo pigment to colour my wild clay balls (dorodangoes=Japanese mud balls).
I like the idea of mapping indigo growing across Scotland and seeing and watching how others work with blue. And just today I got a chance to say hello to my first indigo seedlings! Just thinking about how they carry blue makes me smile. Come visit me on Instagram.
https://www.instagram.com/nickiwilkins
My Indigo diaries 2022 – Day 24 – Planting Japanese Indigo seeds with a group of “Home” growers in Scotland
On day 24 of my Indigo diaries 2022 I feel so happy about my 1500 planted Indigo seeds so far. From growing in a raised bed in my back garden in 2021, this year I am starting growing an Indigo Plot in the Glasgow Botanical garden and that is definitively upscaling. But I am very excited about the adventure. Off course it means loosing control of the close by site, growing on a bigger scale, in different grounds… a lot of changes. But the great reward will be the sharing of the result. Leaves and dyeing will be dong in a more community level. For that reason I have put a call out for some volunteers who want to share the work and the learning. Advertised in Scotland via Social media and various groups. And 25 people have come forward. Some will help, some will grow at home.
Most of the seeds I planted back in march have germinated and are growing steadily. Strong and tall they are not yet showing their leaves but some really good green tops. An other couple of weeks I will be transplanting them into individual pots and start preparing the grounds at the Glasgow Botanical Garden. But for this i need a helping hand. I am searching for a team of volunteers who will help with the digging, planting, up keeping and then dyeing…
But in the meantime I have found a team of 21 Scottish growers who will join me on the adventure and this post is for them… They come from the 4 corners of Scotland, Mallaig, Edinburgh, Lewis, Inverness, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, the Borders etc… and they are artists, nature lovers, vegetable growers, weavers, and have volunteered a little bit of space to grow Japanese Indigo alongside me. We will share notes, exchange on the process and when the leaves are ready we will learn to process the leaves to use the pigment.
This morning I have sent out to each of them 50 seeds of Persicaria Tinctoria (Japanese Indigo) of the Senbon variety. In a few days we will have an information meeting on zoom to get to know each other, talk about the project and learn about how to grow it.
But for now some basic instruction on how to plan Japanese Indigo seeds to get them to germinate:
You need:
- Some planting trays with small holes (around 5 x 5 cms) that will sit on top of a watering trays.
- Some planting compost
- Some Japanese Indigo seeds (multiple of 5)
- A light/warm corner to seat your trays for a few weeks (out of the draft)
- Some small pots for transplanting your seeds when they are big enough to mature outside (green house/cold frame).
- A corner in the garden with a good light space that will get a lot of sun and near a water access, Indigo likes a lot of water to grow… a lot of sunlight for pigment.
How to proceed to get germination:
1 – Add a good layer of compost into each holes of the planting tray. Use a little glass upside down to push the compost down nice and compact. Use a pencil to push down a little hole in the middle.
2 – Drop down 5 seeds together and a little compost on top. They will germinate together and grow like a bushy little plant. Japanese Indigo plant like company.
3 – Make sure the compost is kept humid but not watery. It is better to water from the underneath. I use a watering tray with something like foam under the planting tray.
4 – You seeds should germinate in anything between 5 to 12 days. Depending on how much light and how warm it is.
5 – Your seeds will then take another two to three weeks to get more mature (make sure they are watered.) and can be transferred to small pots.
6 – If your trays are sitting indoors by a window the small seedlings will grow towards the glass. I keep turning them around every couple of days to make them grow straight.
7 – Our aim is to have the seedlings strong enough to be outdoors to get stronger in May and get planted outside in the bed/pot they will en up in.
Have fund…
Elisabeth