John Marshall, Covelo, California
elevation: 1400’, growing zone 8b
John Marshall is an artist and an educator, specializing in paste resit
techniques and natural dyes on natural fibers. John has been researching
Japanese dyes and textiles for well over forty years and is acting as
facilitator and webmaster for this group effort.
Please visit John’s web page at www.John Marshall.to to find out about classes offered and other relevant information. Visit his
blog at JohnMarshall.to/blog to read more about katazome, indigo, and other Japanese textile and cultural
topics.
Following is a list of links to John’s blog relating to tadeai:
Some of John’s work:
Year of the Horse (using indigo pigment/katazome resist)
Leaping Horse (vat dyed/katazome resist)
Planting data:
3/14/17 seeds planted in plastic trays fill with commercial organic potting soil (peat
moss, recycled forest products, coconut coir, perlite, compost, worm castings).
The trays were set out in the plot where they will be grown later. Weather
averaging in the 70’s, sunny.
3/18/17 Soil welling and starting to rise up from activity beneath.
3/20/17 First sign of sprouts breaking surface. The weather has remained warm, highs in
the low 70’s during the day, lows in the low 40’s at night.
3/24/17 Bird attack! Small yellow house wrens discovered the flats and invited their
friends for a banquet. Three flats were covered, two not. The two uncovered ones suffered the worst
damage.
3/26/17 Frost warning, so I moved the flats to the boiler room area of my studio - still
outside but covered.
4/1/17 Seedlings recovering from bird attack, I put them back outside with covers over
all to cut back on aerial assaults.
4/15/17 Seedlings doing nicely. Average leave size of 1.25 cm, and total average height
of 1.5 cm. Rain past three days, lows in mid thirties, highs in upper fifties.
Soil conditions: I haven’t tested the soil pH yet, but the plot is under a one hundred year old black
walnut tree. The dropping leaves tend to turn the soil beneath acidic. A visual
inspection confirms this - buttercups, which love moist, acid soil, are
plentiful along with columbine. Healthy columbine indicate rich, well-drained
soil.
Weather conditions: This has been an odd year. After an extended drought, we have had more rainfall
than we have had in the past twenty years. The walnut leaves haven’t come out yet, but the palownia trees have bloomed and gone (witnesses to the
mild winter past), the bing cherries trees have set their fruit, camellias are
just ending, purple iris are in full bloom, and both tree and herbaceous
peonies are in bloom - more than two months early for the tree peonies.
seedlings one month after planting seeds, 4/15/17
flat of starts with cover in place, 4/15/17
~7/8/17 Not much to report other than that they have been growing! I have the beds on a
yardbird sprinkler with a timer. It is set to go off for ninety minutes every
night around 2:00 in the morning. We’ve had temperatures mostly in the 90’s, sometimes reaching 108ºF mid-day, dropping to the 50’s at night. The plants are now between 22” and 24” high, with rich green leaves. They’re ready to harvest. I’ll be sending out directions and supplies to all the participants shortly.
