Hello. I'm Amanda McNulty with Making it Grow and
Clemson Extension. And I'm so excited today I'm
speaking with Allison Jones and Allison is an
educational coordinator with the South Carolina
Botanical Garden. And she has been gracious enough
to once come all the way to Sumter to be on
our show. Today we're doing something in the
new way of doing things during this unusual time
that we're all finding ourselves in. Allison thank
you so much for sharing your beautiful backyard
with us too. Thank you, Amanda.
I'm glad to be with you. You love to do hands on
activities with children. And I think today you're
gonna tell us about one that would be particularly
appropriate for this time of year.
That's right. I wanted to share with your viewers
how to make egg dye. But not just any egg dye,
making egg dye out of natural ingredients.
So in particular, what I plan to show you all how
to do is how to make it egg dye out of cabbage, purple
cabbage and yellow onion skins. There are
other options out there but those ones I have
done year after year. And they always work well for
us. You don't just dye the egg though. You have
kind of bring in the botanical aspect I think in some
ways and that really sounds fun. Explain how you
use things that you find in nature on the eggs.
Absolutely yes so that's the other aspect of it, is
not just decorating the most dye. but applying
essentially a botanical silhouettes to them, using
things that you find outside so leaves or
flowers. And when you're looking for these
materials you want small scale things. So really
what works best usually are leaves or flowers
of little common weeds that most people can find
in their lawn. I really like using clover leaves.
They make a nice clean in
silhouette on there. You can use a little
common violet. Sometimes they will add another
hue on top of our two, instead of a silhouette
you might get a little bit of a blue
color you know added to it. So anything that
you find you and you think a pretty shade would
look nice on there, you can do that.
Well, it really sounds fun but
so tell us, you make, how you going to
make the dyes? Because I guess we need to do.
So the first step is making your dye bath. Okay!
So you need a stainless steel pot you need to
be maybe two to three quarts in size so you'll
have plenty of room to work in. And you start
by adding your dye agents. If you're using the
cabbage, you want to cut it up just chop it up
it doesn't have to be finely chopped coarsely
chopped. And you're gonna put that or your onion
skins down into your pot. If you're using onion skins,
you're gonna need about ten onions worth.
If you're making a big batch but just use what
you have to get the batch you can get. And then
you're going to cover the dye stuff, the dye
agents with water and add two to three tablespoons
of white vinegar. And that's going to help
break up the eggshell helping to absorb the dye.
And excuse me, if you don't have white vinegar
and you just have cider vinegar I don't think
that would ruin the process. Would it? I don't
think so either. More than likely that acidity would
still work the same way. If it gives a little
bit of a different of a color then, I think that's
okay. That's part of the fun. It's an experiment to
some degree, right?
So, once you have those
ingredients in there you'll bring that pot to
a boil. And then once it comes to a boil you'll turn
it down and let it simmer about thirty minutes. Okay!
And once once you're at that point, you can choose-
There about three different methods that
you can choose from to make your eggs. Now,
when you ask about decorating the eggs.
So, now that you have dye, it's it's being
prepared right? You focus on decorating your
eggs. So you gonna gather those leaves that I
mentioned earlier and you'll have your eggs.
You apply those leaves whether you're working
with boiled eggs or with raw eggs.
And we'll get into that in a minute. You apply those
leaves with a damp finger. So I like to have like a
little bowl of water nearby that I can put my
finger tips in. And then I rub the surface of
the egg a bit. And then I will apply the least face
down. And that water helps to kind of create a seal,
stick on and then you can take what we do is
take old. Doesn't have to be old. Old or new panty hose,
and we cut them into strips. So about two
inches wide works. You'll cut back the leg into a
strip. Cut the end of it, so you get a nice open
strip and then you can take that, you're gonna
hold your egg. Sometimes you need a friend
to help you that can hold the egg or have the child
hold the egg while they tie that section of panty
hose around the egg and secure the botanical on.
So you want to put the
strip face down on top, first like the middle of
the strip would go right on top of maybe the
little cloverleaf. Yeah That's right. You would
reach around the back and secure it, pull it tight.
Not too tight, you don't want to break the egg. But tight enough
to hold it. And okay and then you're set to move to the
next step. That's right. That's right. So at that
step, like I said, you have options. So now it's
ready to go in the dye bath. If you are using
boiled eggs, you can put them in the dye bath and
you can actually start it to
heat it up again a little if you like. Because
heating it up is going to achieve the darkest
colors. So you also though can take a raw egg
and put it in the dye bath and not just heat it
up a little bit, but bring it back up to a boil and
boil your eggs in the dye bath. Wow!
That gives you a dark rich rich color.
However if you want to have eggs that you can
keep it indefinitely, you can keep this kind of
a momento. And you may only choose to do this
with a few of them, but to do that you're going to
use a raw egg. So in that process of adding the
leaves, you would have done it with a raw egg.
And then that you will use food dye.
And you will lower that egg into the dye bath
submerge it completely and you're gonna have to wait longer
for those results. But that's what allows you to
blow it out later and keep it indefinitely. So
you can keep, Kids enjoy if you're doing
that process with kids. They like being able to
lift it up every so often and see what color it is.
I always have trouble blowing eggs. My eggs seem
to, I just don't have any success with it. But you
said you figured out how to do it pretty good.
Yes. So, the traditional
way of blowing an egg out is you need- What works
best really is like a push pin, a straight pin
and just like you if you were pinning a hen? Yeah!
Exactly you're pinning hen before you -
So a straight pin and you can take that. You
have to practice. So don't don't try it on a
beautiful egg you're so attached to.
(laughs)
Use it. Do it with a raw egg first. And just
see how it goes. But you are going to create one
hole on the bottom of the egg, the broader portion
of the egg. Start with that and you just slowly
apply pressure until you get the needle to break
through. And then you kind of start to move it around.
You can feel that you what you're doing is
breaking up the yolk and the membrane in there.
You're gonna just really a break that up, okay. You
also need to create a hole on the other end. The
hole that goes on what I consider the top end of
the egg, the narrow portion of the egg, you
might you're gonna wanna make that one a little
bit smaller. Because it's going to be the more
visible but you want big enough that that the egg
can come through. You, like I said you wanna practice
that and see what's going to happen. But the main
thing is break up all the insides. Once you feel
like you've done that with your
straight pin or even a safety pin
to use whatever you have that you can make use of.
Okay! You're gonna stir it all up. Kind of scramble
it in there. And then you could even shape it.
Now be warned stuff will come out. It's a little messy.
Okay! But you can get it. Now the trick like I
said is to then use your mouth to blow the
contents of the egg out. So you'd kinda wipe off this,
the surface and then create a seal with your
mouth on the larger hole on the bottom of the egg.
Strike it. Reverse it.
on the top of the egg, you would blow and then blow
out of the larger hole on the bottom. This
can be hard to do without breaking an egg. And it
also can make you dizzy. You know you're really
having to work hard to control your breath. So
the trick that I use is if you just happen to
have or can get a hold of a baby aspirator, the
little bulbs that we use on babies' noses and
mouths, then you can use one of those to put
it right over that top small hole and make a
seal and then give it a push. You just be careful
not to- Then, you want to remove it when you let
go because you don't wanna suck egg into your
aspirator. Also obviously you're not
gonna use the aspirator again after you use it for eggs
probably. (laughs)
You'll have to have two one
for the children and one- That's right!
That's right! If you're like me you just have them
laying around and you're like why am I still
holding on to this? I do not need this for my
child for a while. Oh! I have a good use for it.
A lot of us are going to find that we've got
things that we were holding on to that we
might bring out and find a use for. Maybe you
can (inaudible) or all kinds of things there that had been
gathering dust, other things besides baby nasal
aspirators. Isn't it nice to think that we can go out
and make people look
at some common weeds and find a different way to
look at them instead of thinking, 'Oh I've got to
use herbicide and get you know everything under
control. And maybe even a little. I guess if you
even have a little houseplant maybe that was
a fern or something? Absolutely! You could make a
little bit of those could you? Yeah I think that's a
great idea. Yeah! Really it kind of opens your eyes
up to looking for these little diminutive pretty
shapes and in just about any plant. Right? There's
potential there. So you're right. That's a smart idea
too. Because some folks you know they may
not have as as many plants outside to choose
from so looking inside is a good idea too. Well, Allison
Jones, you are so kind. I'm going to share with
our viewers that you got two small children at
home and you are using your two free hours when
they're taking a nap to learn how to do a
wonderful project for Easter eggs. And I want to
thank you so very much. And thank you for all the
beautiful joy that the South Carolina Botanical
Garden brings to people across the State of South
Carolina. Thank you, Amanda. I really
appreciate the invitation. And thank you
guys for all the fun stuff you're bringing
to folks at home as well. All right, well.
I hope you get a little bit of time to fold the
clothes before the children wake up.
(laughs)
I appreciate it. Bye. Bye.