Oh dear! I have led you all astray! Yesterday Kristine noticed the "madder" was getting very tall. I replied and said yeah that is so weird, I thought it was like a bush instead of a stalk. Then Kristine said it looks like sunflowers. Then it dawned on me. My Madder were actually sun flowers! The Madder plants never germinated! SAD!!! I am now replanting indoors to make sure. I am also replanting some indigo. They never really got very big. I think they just damped off.
Why did I use the plexi glass over the seed tray in the first planting?
The plexi acts as a mini greenhouse allowing the moisture to stay inside, instead of evaporating. The moisture helps with germination. It helps with softening the hard seed coat. However since the plexi was lying flat it did not allow the plants to grow upright. The sunflowers germinated in days and started curving inside against the glass. So I took the glass of but lost my perfect germination environment that I would have needed for the madder and indigo to sprout. My solution was to by a dome top at the store specially designed for the seed tray. We will see if this helps. 
Below is a picture of a Madder plant from the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Replanting!
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3 comments:
Interesting blog. I stumbled upon it via the Homesteading Webloggers Ring. All the other natural dye blogs I visit are fiber folk!
My madder didn't sprout either, it must be a tough one to get started from seed.
That's too bad about your madder. I've read you can dye with sunflowers though.
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