I received a shipment of 9 woad seedlings, ordered from a company called Herbal Haven. I am late in the season and would like to have some woad plants to trial a few dyeing experiments with. By my calculations, if they grow well, this should yield enough to make a vat and dye a good few pieces of cloth.
This growing bed is in my garden. Last year we grew vegetables here, such as potatoes, carrots, courgettes and pumpkin, fairly successfully. Although no expert, I have been creating my own compost and this year, prepared this bed by digging a lot of last year’s compost into the bed ahead of planting.
I was careful to gently remove the seedlings from the pots and loosen some of the roots, but my worry is that they will be sensitive to the root disturbance. I will track their progress as I go along, but I am not going to rely on this source alone. In order to get started and learn more about the process of woad dyeing, I shall order some dye extract, which has already been steeped and reduced so that the extract can be dried and stored as a powder for later use.
A source for this is via a company called DT craft and design, who sell small jars of 10g for around £14.50 or as a part of complete dyers starter kit (to include the processing substances: sodium carbonate and thiourea dioxide, as well as some basic tools) for £21.00.
Sources:
– Herbal Haven
– DT Craft & Design