September in the Dye Garden

by Carlie Muessig

This season has resulted in an incredible crop of beautiful dye plants!

Marigolds and coreopsis continue to bloom and be harvested, while the sunflowers come and go and the goldenrod towers over the other plots (though it has yet to flower). 

We recently had an opportunity to dye with our purple perilla, purple basil, and fresh indigo. Melanie Hasan of Modest Transitions generously donated her time to conduct an indigo salt rub demo at the Dye Garden this month. This process was simple and yielded some very impressive results.

If you’d like to harvest any of the plants in the garden for your own experimentation, please let me know! You do not need to be in the Natural Dye SIG or be a garden volunteer., but you need to be a member!