Harvesting Weld

In the UK weld is considered a weed that needs to be got rid of as quickly as possible - well so it seems whenever I find a stand of it flourishing.

A few weeks ago I spotted the most enormous stand of weld - but not ready to pick, so I patiently waited a few weeks and then went back, oh no, virtually all gone! I couldn't believe it, almost all of it had been strimmed away by the local council. Fortunately they didn't bother to go round the edges very well so we have manged to crop some for the coming year.



An hour spent going round the area yielded








This was tied up in bundles like this

These were tied onto a "sheila maid" under the dye house canopy













Then lifted up to spend a few weeks drying before we chop it up ready for use!

Spinning

My New Year's resolution this year was to get back into spinning, I used to spin all the time - it was my stress buster and my pleasure. Recently with all the travelling we do I seem to sit at the wheel less and less!

Just to prove that I'm keeping to my resolution, look what I just found on you tube!

Weld

We've been her for over two years now and it's about time we started putting our mark on the place - well you'd think! I'm usually pretty good at killing off plants that I try to grow, so it's quite rare that I  put myself in charge of plants. Those that seed themselves - well that's another story!

So a while ago I found a little seeling growing as normal almost in a doorway. I left it alone and let it do it's own thing - now look at it! Just the one little floret found and away it goes!

It isn't quite ready to harvest yet - the seeds need to be formed properly. Many people think that this is when you get the best of colours but for me it needs to be when the plant has gone over to seed. I collected some weld once that was almost dead. The colours I obtained were the best ever!

So in the mean time I will plan what I can do with the first weld plant of the new home - it really has to be something special!