Laura and I have grown and dyed with many different dye plants. This coming spring we really wanted to have a production garden solely for dye plants, including a large indigo plot. I have plenty of room at our place, but as our house is going on the market soon, I didn't want to plant anything. Laura's gardening space is filled up with silly stuff like herbs and veges. We knew about a garden space in town in Berea that was not being used, and though a series of fortunate conversations, we now have a gardening space! Here's what it looked like before we did anything:

I know. As pretty much everyone says when they hear our good news: "You have your work cut out for you!" I am inordinately excited about this half acre in town. We plan to have a market garden as well, 'cause you know, we don't have enough going on. It was well-tended in the past, so it's not like starting from scratch, and we will be working with a few other women to get it in shape. I love this time of year, and the whole month of December, when the seed catalogs start rollin' in. There is nothing like breaking out the graph paper and plotting out garden space. It's my favorite part of gardening, in direct contrast to weeding in July, which is my least favorite part. So, we're making beds this fall, planting garlic, and planning, planning, planning. I'm saving the best part for last- it's been my holy grail of 10 years of gardening. I can rock the fluorescent lights and start tomato and pepper seedlings like nobody's business, but I think it will take our plant starting to the next level. Check it-

One little project I have been wanting to share is from my  vegetable garden. We are in the midst of a drought and I always tend to loose interest in my garden this time of year anyway. When I went out to clean up the spent pea vines, I noticed a bunch of partially dried pods. Having just read Seed to Seed I realized these contained next years (free!!) pea seeds. So, Eli and I moved the armfuls of dried vines to a tarp, rolled it up like a giant jelly roll, and stomped like crazy.

Do you see the little peas in and amongst the...other stuff, and are you thinking how in the world would you pick them out?! Well, let me tell ya' you just toss up the handfuls of this mess and the heavy little peas gravitate towards the bottom of the pile and the light chaff can be pulled off and tossed in the compost. Then you are left with this: 

I tried to toss this from one basket to another hoping the wind would blow away that pesky chaff, but it was not windy enough. Apparently you can use a fan, but mine was in use. While fiddling with this, I figured out just by swirling this mess around the peas sunk to the bottom, and I could easily pick off the chaff. Final product:
Aren't they chalk-y and lovely? The final step was to test their driness by smashing one pea with a hammer. If it shattered, it was ready to store, mine need to dry a bit. This was super-fun, a very Laura Ingalls type activity, (or is it in Farmer Boy that they do threshing?) This whole project was spontaneous, getting something from my garden in an area where  I thought all I had going on was compost waiting to be collected. It is this kind of "behind the scenes" view of plants doing their thing that keeps me gardening.