My garden this year is almost entirely set set aside for growing a source of plants for my dye pot.
Food for the soul has now evidently superseded the need for food to feed the body.
In my quest to find some new plants to experiment with, I found something in a catalog that came to S. We both ordered a few things from it. Among them this amazing packet of wondrous promise:
Evidently it is used in some parts of the world to dye food. And is used as a tea. It sounded like something I needed to try.
As a long time gardener, I am no longer trusting of the words, "easy to grow", which it says on this packet. Easy relative to what exactly? Easy as pie? Pie isn't all that easy to make if we were being honest about it. Making a pie is a whack of fuss budgeting if ever there was.
So I got the seeds. I read the instructions. You need to 'scarify' and soak the seeds. I don't know how you scare a seed. So I threatened them with some ammonia.
(Please tell me you didn't do that. Any fool knows scarify means to nick or abrade the seed.)
Gotcha!
I knew that! Hahhahah!
Anyway. I did everything properly and planted half of the seeds in peat pots in the house. Nothing happened. I kept them warm. Other seeds in the trays sprouted. Not these. After about two solid weeks, I started over with the remaining seeds. Finally two of them sprouted. One of them could not make it out of the seed casing and died. The remaining one was larger and I managed to coax the hard seed casing off the tender leaves.
So now I have a lone survivor. A precious specimen. The only one of its kind on the homestead or even in my whole county. Though S. bought some seeds too. I'll bet hers grow with no issues and I'll feel like an idiot. But for now all I have is this...
Have you ever seen the movie Wall-E ? If you haven't, you need to. :-)
In that movie, a little seedling sets in motion a whole complex sequence of events. In fact, it's the motivation for everything that takes place. It's such a fragile little thing. Just like my one and only remaining hope for dye pot experimentation.
It's a cliff hanger for sure.
I'm putting it outside for limited times during the day to harden off..... as it's called. So when it eventually gets set into the garden it won't be shocked by the strength of the sun. At least that's the theory.
Gardening is full of such acts of faith every single day.
Only thing is... during this time we are living in, I am not fully equipped to cope with many more disappointments. This is a concern. I'm keeping an eye on myself about it.
I'll do my best to give it what it needs.
We'll see how strong its will to live really is in the coming weeks.
