Natural Dyeing with Pericón
Pericón, also known as Mexican Tarragon, is a traditional dyestuff native to Mexico and Central America. It has a pleasant anise or licorice smell which I find to be a real joy to harvest and dye with. These plants were started by seed in our heated greenhouse in April about 6 weeks before our average last frost date. The first week of June they were transplanted out to a row in one of our no-till plots. I harvested the plants in late August when the small yellow flowers were in full bloom. When harvesting I cut back the entire plant tops leaving about 3” for the plants to regenerate. In about 5 weeks the plants were flowering again and I was able to harvest them a second time.
When I harvest the plants, I make bunches right out in the field. Then the bunches are taken into the dry room and hung upside down to dry. From there I use clippers to chop the dry plant tops into 2-3” pieces.
This is my first season growing Pericón so I haven’t been able to experiment with it much yet. The other day I was able to test it on an organic cotton and hemp blend fabric. The fabric was scoured, mordanted with gall tannin then alum + soda ash as explained in the linked post, then dyed with Pericón at 50% WOF. This yielded a lovely dusty green-gold shade. I’m looking forward to testing this dye on wool yarn and I’ll be sure to share the results here when I do.
