Gill Owen, volunteer
We have successfully grown a number of dye plants in the garden at Forgan this year.
Dyers chamomile, Coreopsis tinctoria and Japanese indigo were all grown from seed before planting out. Dyers greenweed and madder plants were 3 years old before planting out in the garden. The yellow flowers of chamomile, coreopsis and dyers greenweed have provided lots of colour in the garden and should provide lovely colours in the dye pot. Japanese indigo leaves and madder roots have given good blue and pink/red colours on wool so far. We look forward to further natural dyeing experiments with our dye plants.
Images show dyers greenweed, madder, Japanese indigo, coreopsis and chamomile.
Helena Simmons, Garden Facilitator
We usually like to welcome visitors to the Forgan Arts Centre community garden, and welcome visitors harvesting some of the crops. However some visitors are less welcome and have been eating more than we were offering.
The late night visits by the deer have not only eaten the strawberries, but taken the leaves off the plants too. They were particularly keen on the dwarf bean plants, the roses and climbing beans. Luckily they are not too tall and we’ve managed to harvest some of the purple podded beans growing on the trellis, the ones that managed to make it over browsing height. I am not sure how good for the deer’s tummies the potato leaves were but the kale, beetroot and carrot tops were no doubt delicious.
We still managed to get a good crop of the beetroot and carrots despite them losing their leaves, and as they did not seem keen on eating rocket, onions or broad beans, don’t be surprised to spot a few onions in with the strawberries and a row of rocket alongside the resown spinach.
Strangely enough the edible flower bed remains uneaten, and there is now a lot more chicken wire strategically placed around the garden, in an attempt to reduce the amount the deer get and maximise the amount we can harvest.
I can’t blame the deer too much, they were probably delighted that we had laid on such a tasty spread for them.
