Growing a dye garden- 5
As we left May and entered June, the heat of the summer suddenly arrived. A shock for some of the small plants which found it hard to make it through the bank holiday weekend without a drop of water: the carrots tops fried and the sunflowers got sunburnt yet survived!
Sunflowers and marigold Madder roots
Weld ( top) Coreopsis flowers, Japanese indigo and woad
It’s time for most of the seedlings to get to a bigger space. With the help of the students from the Green roof @ualgreenroof , we make plan to move them in larger containers.
The students take part in looking after the roof garden, including weeding, watering and planting. Because of covid restrictions they’ve only had a brief access to the roof this year and as we are already approaching the end of term, we appreciate their commitment to keep the garden going and their enthusiasm with the dye garden project.
In some existing small planters we add some of the edible, including herbs together with the sunflowers. We fill up some fabric felt bags with top soil and a layer of compost for the dye plants.
This is a specially hot day and we hope the plants won’t be too disturbed by the move.
We haven’t had time to plant everything and some seedlings might benefit to get a bit more strength before they move territory.
In the meantime we prepare and reinforce a planter made of pallets to accommodate more plants. We also gather some blue tabs (reused binder containers from the workshop) to host the bay leaves trees and fennel plants.
Coreopsis flowers ( right corner)
Japanese Indigo Safflower
It seems a long way since we sow the seeds in March/ April. How rewarding to slowly see them growing despite the extreme weathers they had to confront the past few months.
The roof being so exposed with very little shade we have started to investigate water irrigation system for the plants.