Planting

The time has come to plant.  My husband picked up yellow squash, cucumber, several different pepper and tomato plants.  All have been planted in our garden bins.   I used to want to keep all six of my garden bins for dye plants but have discovered that having fresh tomatoes from the garden is worth more than most dye plants.

I've planted one entire garden bin with marigolds and added the remaining marigold plants to the vegetable bins and to some extra pots.  Two large flats of marigolds go a long way.

My grandsons were here this past week and wanted to pick some flowers.  We picked all the marigolds that were ready and dried them in the oven.  We have officially started our stash of dried marigolds for the year.  It's a small start but we are on the move now!

Also in the mix are zinnias.  I've never grown them before and they will be a useful dye plant.  I expect we will get beige and soft yellow/browns but they will be a great example for the natural dye class we expect to have later this spring.  I will be sure to post it when we set a date.

The madder continues to occupy it's own garden bin.  It happily grows along from year to year putting out new growth and spring blooms.  The blooms are very small and almost invisible so they don't add much flash to the garden but we love the red/orange color the roots give us.