Sunday, August 21, 2011

Indigo Comparison

I finally have some time to update on my indigo from this summer! Even though life's event put me a little behind on my indigo, I am still on target for the goal I set for my indigo this year--a comparison of the plants. I have three varieties going. All though all are polygonum tinctorium, they are each a little different. For my project this summer, I used the seeds I had left from Companion Plants and two varieties I was able to purchase from the Indi Growing Blue project. I compared the two varieties of seeds in this post http://elephantbooty.blogspot.com/2011/04/looking-close-at-indigo-seeds.html Now to compare the growing plants:

The kojyoko variety will have white bloom and green stem.
The senbon variety will have pink blooms and stems with a reddish cast.
From Companion Plants, labeled Polygonum Tictorium, but not sure of the actual variety.





From the pictures above, you can see that the top two look very similar as far as the leaves go. I need to get a picture of the stems for my next post. The bottom picture shows how the leaves are darker and have a tendency to curl on the other variety. It is interesting for me to note that Companion Plants no longer carries Polygonum Tinctorium and has instead Indigofera Tinctoria. I am wondering if what they had  before was not labeled correctly or had not been indentified correctly.

In order to make sure I get some seeds from these plants, I am going to let one group from each row remain uncut. I will be able to harvest the leaves soon and I am devising a method for comparing the yields of each variety.