Safflower harvest

Montana grew a bunch of safflower plants from seed last year which survived the mild winter, which is pretty rare up here, and also survived a transplant from the main garden to her rock garden area. Safflower is excellent for natural dyeing, so I harvested the little floret “strands” from her plant for that purpose, since the Natural Dye Studio is one of my winter projects.

These are the bright orange-red safflower plants. The stems are smooth, as are the flowers, but the leaves are PAINFULLY thorn-like, similar to holly.

Those little red strands are the florets, and they are what we harvest for natural dyeing. When they are dry, as they are now, they just pull away from the seed pod.

These little florets can actually make both yellow and red dye, so it should be a fun set of experiments. For now, they just need to dry a bit more on the tray, and then in a week or two, once they are completely dry, I can put them in a jar for future use. The color on these florets is really peak!

I’m going to let the stripped plants also dry out for awhile, to see if any of those seed pods are mature enough to save for next year’s seed. I suspect they were just a little too green when they were cut, so I think I’ll plan on buying a packet of safflower seeds for next year, just in case.