Spring Preparation: Natural dyeing with plum branches

 

Speaking plums, to have flowers opening in early spring, we have to take care of them. That is, we need to prune their branches and twigs which often go whichever direction they find convenient. If we leave them as they please, the entire tree ends up with tangled branches. During summer when they have lots of leaves, the system of branches and leaves has poor ventilation = infested by pests and mold. Inevitably, they will not have flowers, and no fruits will be harvested. On the other hand, during summer they do vigorous photosynthesis and so they need leaves. If we trim them during summer, the tree will be starved, and no flower could be expected, or, worse, the tree could die. So, we have to prune them sufficiently at the right moment. The timing of removing unruly twigs is after they shed their leaves in late autumn. The amount of cutting is … it’s difficult to say definitely. But several sure points are

1. We should remove twigs shoot up straight from the bough which will become the base of tangled up tree branches,
2. We have to be careful to cut branches that have winter buds. Reason? Obvious, isn’t it?

It’s a sorry state of a plum orchard in Niiharu.
I’ve never seen flowers here.
The place became accessible for Niiharu Lovers last year.
(Till then, it was a private property, off-limit for us.)
Let us see what we can do here.

Lovers of Niiharu take care of this plum tree,
and yearly harvest plum fruits.
Even though, the branches are like this.

So, I pruned twigs and branches of plum trees in my mom’s garden last fall. They are small trees and did not require me much effort. Besides, this year I had another mission from the gardening. I decided to use cut branches of plum trees for natural dyeing. Although the trees of my mom are small, the amount of trimmed twigs required two 20L garbage bags if I disposed of them straight to the garbage collectors. It’s a pity doing this especially when we can utilize them, so I thought. This week I tell you my adventure of natural dyeing with these plum twigs.

Mom’s plum flower this February. My labour of love 😊

First, we have to prepare the pruned branches for dyeing. I chose the standard method of natural dyeing: stewing the plants for a while to extract their dye and dunk the fabric in the colouring-stew. In order to obtain the dye essence efficiently, it’s better the “meat” of the plant thoroughly stewed. If the plant is a tree with a hard body, we need to julienne or mince them … Plum trees have robust bough. When the twigs were young, it was easy to chop them by scissors. But when they reached 0.5cm or so diameter, making minced twigs became really a hard work. I quickly gave up making minced plum trees and did a bit of googling how pros were doing. They use only the barks of plum tree for dyeing. Bravo! I employed this approach, but still, it was a hard work peeling the barks with a machete …

The trimmed twigs from mom’s trees.

Minced plum twigs. This was the limit I could handle.

Next, I folded these minced twigs and barks in drain-nets, close the mouths tightly, and threw them in a boiling pot.

The drain-nets

The minced twigs and peeled barks are in the nets.

The oven I borrowed from the Niiharu Lovers’ Association.

Boiling …

The nets were thrown in the pot.

After about an hour boiling the pot had rose-like colour. We were ready for dyeing. For natural dyeing we use fabric of animal origin, like silk and wool. When we plan to dye plant-based fabrics like cotton or linen, we must first soak the fabric in soy milk overnight and dry it. i.e. The protein has the power to bond with natural dye. This time, I found a bargain silk downtown, so I did not have to take this stage.

The pot an hour later. Could you figure out the tinged liquid inside?

Dunking a fabric with protein in the dye, and let it keep boiling. This time I stewed it for about an hour.

We’re plunging the silk in the pot.
On that day, kids from near-by junior-high
came to experience natural dyeing.

Then, mixed the fabric in the pot with chop sticks for a while.

The silk an hour later

An hour later, the white silk now had this colour. It was damned hot so I drained it carefully and gentry, then bathed the dyed silk in alum solution. It was to settle the color in the fabric. Alum is a fixative. Internet says many things about the concentration ratio for alum-bath, but among Niiharu-Lovers “It’s not important as long as the solution has enough alum dissolved.” So, I added about 2 tablespoons of alum in 10L water.

Alum and 10L water

Let the dyed fabric swim in the alum solution for a while, about 10 or 15 minutes. Drained it and washed it in a cold water. Squeezed the liquid from the fabric, and let it air dry. Don’t you find the colour of the silk lovely?

The silk is taking fixative bath of alum.

The pot after taking out the fabric.
It’s a lovely colour.
If you want to have more deeper colour on your fabric,
you use the liquid for the second round
after rinsing it with water.

There is another choice of fixing agent for natural dyeing. It‘s by iron. We can use nails for that, otherwise we purchase iron mordant liquid from internet. In general, iron fixing produces grey to dark brown color ... It‘s a matter of taste. For both cases, the liquid waste from dyeing can safely drained in forest when that’s not a huge amount like our natural dyeing adventure. I‘m going to use my pinky-orange dyed silk for spring throw-on. 😊 Better to have light color for this, don‘t you think?

Drying

It‘ll be my spring throw-on.💕🎵

If you find a problem in the greenery of north-half of Yokohama, please make a contact with

Office for the Park Greeneries in the North
北部公園緑地事務所
Yokohama Municipal Government Creative Environment Policy Bureau
横浜市環境創造局
Phone: 045-311-2016
FAX: 045-316-8420