A few days ago Jeff dug up the madder root and horseradish root in the garden. In these pictures, it just looks like some muddy roots, but they are treasures. (As you can see, the chickens assisted Jeff in digging up the madder root.) Years ago Jeff and I got excited about dye plants and our friend shared dye plants from her garden with us. We planted them all over the place, but the next few years we realized that since we have limited garden space (and we never did get around to dyeing with anything we harvested), we really wanted to use the space we had available for vegetables, herbs, and fruit. (Playing with natural dyes is still something that sounds like lots of fun and I’m sure at some point we’ll experiment with that, but in the meantime we have quite a few other creative outlets we’re giving our attention to.)
So, most of our dye plants were dug up, but we left the madder root because it needs to be in the ground for three years before you can use it for dyeing. I can’t believe we waited a whole three years to do that, but we did. Now we have some friends who we know will put it to good use, so it will be going to them, and we’re happy that we’ve got that garden space back to plant more edibles. (By the way, madder root makes a beautiful red dye. You can see the red/orange color of the roots in the third picture after they were rinsed.) The horseradish, on the other hand, will be staying right here with us. Jeff has started an experiment and is currently fermenting it to make a fermented condiment. I must say, some spicy horseradish sounds like just the thing in the middle of winter!
P.S. Jeff is the one who usually lets me know when I make a spelling blooper here. He didn’t get around to reading Gratitude Sunday yesterday, but this morning he informed me that I wrote “getting more chickens from our eggs.” Ha!
Stacey says
I would love to try dyeing with madder. I have some seed, now I just have to be patient! : ) I did use some horseradish this year to make fire cider – I think just smelling the cut roots must be medicinal. : )
Earnest Efforts says
That’s funny about the blooper! I read that a couple of times wondering if your hens hatched chicks, then I guess my brain adjusted the sentence and I went on. Ha!
Corina says
What comes first: the chicken or the egg?
That’s so cute: Steve is the one reading my blog posts for spelling errors. I’m glad we have our guys – otherwise there would be some interesting stuff on our blogs, eh?
Except in your case, the mistakes are cute (and handy, since you get chickens from your eggs!)