Indigo Plants

My indigo plants started to show on the 18th March. I bought around 200 seeds from a Japanese woman living in Madrid and they arrived in the most beautifully folded envelope that I haven’t been able to throw away. 

I started them from seed in a greenhouse, watered them daily, chatted to them and wished them bigger. I took on an allotment that needed a lot of clearing to make way for my 200 plants and after many painful days of wrestling with brambles, I got them in their beds.  I fed them gently with seaweed from the beach and watered them with watering cans that gave me pretty strong arms. 

When the world shut down they kept growing, completely oblivious. They kept growing and now they are 1m tall and ready to harvest. Harvest to make a dye. A blue pigment (mostly known for jeans) that is created when the leaves from the plant are broken down. (Before the invention of synthetic indigo in 1897 all blues would have come from natural indigo or woad, different species of plants with indigo in their leaves grew naturally all around the world, they still do but now on a much smaller scale.) 

The pattern of visiting them, watering them, feeding them, weeding them, gave me a rhythm. A rhythm that meant I was outside and seeing the seasons. A rhythm that meant I was happily tired from digging and lugging water. A rhythm that meant I made a friend in a robin who hung out with me every day at the allotment. Growing things will always be the most hopeful thing, life from a tiny seed that wants to survive, connecting us to a greater rhythm, bigger and older than we can imagine and often, we only notice it when we slow to its speed. 

In the hedgerows, one flower arrives then dies and gives way for the next. Snow drops then daffodils then oxeye daisies, they know their time. In the veg patch, the first asparagus pops up in march, then early potatoes, and other things like beetroots. 

This rhythm can give you something to hold onto, when it feels like there is nothing. So the act of growing things is my reason to be cheerful, as well as my home grown indigo dye that I am currently figuring out how to process.

Sarah Johnson

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